Galerie Claude Lemand

7 November 2014

ETEL ADNAN, Writing Mountains. Museum der Moderne Salzburg. Retrospective, 15 Nov. 2014 - 08 March 2015.

ETEL ADNAN, WRITING MOUNTAINS, MUSEUM DER MODERNE SALZBURG.

‘Abstract art was the equivalent of poetic expression; I didn’t need to use words, but colors and lines. I didn’t need to belong to a language-oriented culture, but to an open form of expression.’ (Etel Adnan)

The Museum der Moderne Salzburg is the first institution in Austria to present the versatile work by Etel Adnan, born in Beirut (Lebanon) in 1925, active as writer, poet, artist, and cultural journalist. After studying philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of California in Berkeley (USA), she taught philosophy from 1958 to 1972 at Dominican College in San Rafael, California. From 1972 to 1977 she went back to Beirut and worked as a cultural journalist. In 1977 she was honored with the France Pays Arabes Prize for her novel Sitt Marie-Rose. Etel Adnan has lived in Sausalito, California, and in Paris since 1977.

Parallel to her activity as a writer, Etel Adnan began devoting herself to painting and drawing already in 1959. Her artistic spectrum is expanded by artist’s books in the form of Leporellos, tapestries, room dividers, and Super 8mm films. In the exhibition at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg Adnan’s paintings will be set in relation to her lyrics, and also her enthusiasm for music, which is reflected mainly in the Leporellos.

The artist is particularly fascinated by mountains, and they offer her a continuous source of inspiration for her small-format paintings and drawings: the Jabal Sannin east of Beirut, Mount Tamalpais north of San Francisco, or most recently, the hills of San Gimigniano. At the same time, in Adnan’s work an intense confrontation with Paul Cézanne and Paul Klee is clearly recognizable. In her sounding out of richly contrasting color variations and the borders of abstraction, Adnan’s paintings look like soulscapes in which her poetic language finds visual correspondence. Throughout her entire life, the artist has criticized the world shaped by violence and confrontation and has reacted directly to the happenings within it - but also within her direct surroundings. Her works transgress linguistic, cultural, and geographical borders. They present facets of her identity which Etel Adnan considers a constantly changing process.