Etel Adnan: On Paper, 1960–2021

Opening Thursday, February 13, 2025, 5:00pm – 7:00pm

Galerie Lelong & Co., New York, is pleased to present Etel Adnan: On Paper, 1960-2021, a survey of works on paper by the late artist and writer, opening on Thursday, February 13, 2025. This is the fourth solo exhibition at the gallery by Adnan, who had her first solo exhibitions at Galerie Lelong & Co. in New York and Paris in 2015. This exhibition is the first in the United States to show Adnan's works on paper in depth, including compositions in ink, pencil, pastel, and watercolor, and a selection of leporello artist books. These represent nearly six-decades of Adnan's creative output until her death in 2021. The works on view showcase her distinctive use of gesture and perception across mediums, drawing inspiration from a range of artistic genres such as landscape, still life, and abstraction. This exhibition is held in commemoration of the one-hundredth anniversary of the artist's birth, and in conjunction with Etel Adnan: In the Rhythms of the World, a seminar celebrating Adnan's writing organized by Omar Berrada and Simone Fattal and jointly hosted by the Poetry Project and Giorno Poetry Systems, New York.

The presentation begins in the 1960s, when Adnan worked primarily in an abstract, almost Symbolist manner. Several drawings depicting meetings of celestial bodies are made only with black ink on paper, as though while writing she felt a compulsion to make a drawing with her fountain pen. In a suite of drawings entitled O Moon (c. 1960s), she presents a poem on six sheets of paper, the lines of verse illustrated with ink sketches in the shapes of moons and boats. In select contemporaneous works, ink lines that evoke static shapes and figures are interspersed in fields of soft watercolor, gouache, and pastel, while in others the feeling is decidedly expressive, with the drawings acquiring a more frenetic, joyful energy. Across these early works, Adnan's burgeoning interest in both color and the natural world takes hold.

A series of drawings created in 1991 imagine a traditional still life subject, a bowl of fruit, in various forms. In one ink drawing, Adnan relies only on outlines to create her forms, using thicker strokes to shade the fruit and add detail to the container holding it. In others, Adnan returns to a lighter ink line and employs watercolors to add subtle color to the fruit, reflecting the masterful handling of color for which Adnan is known.

The artist's leporellos—accordion-folded books that measure several feet long when stretched—will also be on view. This format bridges the two branches of Adnan's work: the visual arts and writing. While Adnan, who was known first as an author of poetry and prose, viewed her written and artistic practices as distinct entities, these artist books see her meld the two. Borrowing the formal qualities of books, Adnan at times incorporates repeated symbols and strokes reminiscent of written language, hinting at this other core aspect of her multi-faceted, decades-long career. As the artist once said, "my writing is involved with history as it is made (but not only) and my painting is very much a reflection of my immense love for the world, the happiness to just be, for nature, and the forces that shape a landscape."

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