Etel Adnan

One of the most important artists of the Arab modern era, Etel Adnan was born in 1925 in Beirut. A Lebanese-American poet and painter, she has been living in Paris for almost thirty years. It is through painting that she explores a new foreign language: “I no longer needed to write in French, I was going to paint in Arabic.” Etel Adnan’s painting is an experience of the senses.

“I think Klee was the first painter I fell in love with. He obsessed me. By obsessed, I mean that his paintings put me into a state of ecstasy. They possessed me. In Kairouan, he wrote ‘color and I are one.’ And I understood he was speaking of revelation. For me, he embodied the whole artistic world by himself.”
Etel Adnan

This book was published in conjunction with the exhibitions “Etel Adnan”, co-produced by the Zentrum Paul Klee and Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Modern Grand-Duc Jean