Etel Adnan

Key Signs

2017 -

Ink and Watercolor on Japanese Carnet
18,2 x 12,2 x 4 cm (Open 18.2 x 293 cm).

Since the late 1960s, Etel Adnan has been working with makimono, a type of Japanese horizontal unfolding scroll-like form. They were often filled with texts by Adnan herself or others, and landscapes. In her recent work, including this piece, Adnan has evolved towards a more abstract construction, texts and views becoming an alphabet of signs and glyphs.

Reference EA-WP-2017-A

About the artist

Born in Lebanon 1925
Died in Paris 2021

Works and Lives in Paris, France

Etel Adnan is a Lebanese-American poet, essayist, and visual artist. In 2003, Adnan was named "arguably the most celebrated and accomplished Arab American author writing today" by the academic journal MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States.  
 
She studied literature at the Sorbonne, Paris, at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., and Berkeley University and went on to teach philosophy of art at the Dominican University of California.  
 
Adnan has held solo and group exhibitions in the USA, Jordan, Morocco, France, Belgium, Italy, UK, Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. Etel Adnan‘s work has been acquired by private collections as well as by the Royal Jordanian Museum, the Modern Art Museum in Tunisia, the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, the British Museum, The World Bank in Washington D.C., and the National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.


Other works by this artist

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Etel Adnan

Skopelos Garden 1

1990

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Etel Adnan

Bouyout Al Ankabout

1967

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Etel Adnan

Manifeste pour la Fin de l'Etre de Akl Awit

2007

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Etel Adnan

Skopelos the Garden

1991

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Etel Adnan

Hommage à la Déesse de L'Olivier

2018

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Etel Adnan

Soleil d'ombre

2022