ADNAN Etel

Biographie

Née en 1925 au Liban, Etel Adnan suit des études de littérature à la Sorbonne, puis obtient une maîtrise de poésie à Harvard. Elle a publié différents ouvrages (citons notamment Sitt Marie Rose, roman mettant en scène la guerre civile libanaise, traduit en plusieurs langues) et de nombreux recueils de poésie, en français et en anglais. Artiste autodidacte, elle découvre la peinture en s'intéressant aux tapisseries et aux céramiques ; elle commence à peindre à l'âge de 33 ans. Elle a souvent exposé aux Etats-Unis, et tout particulièrement à San-Francisco, mais également au Maroc et au Liban.

Born in 1925 in Beirut to a Muslim Syrian father and a Christian Greek mother, Etel Adnan worked for the French Information Bureau at 16 years of age. She Attended Ecole Superieure des Lettres and taught at the Ahliya School for Girls.
Etel Adnan then studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard. She taught philosophy of art at Dominican College of San Rafael, California, and has presented courses, classes, and lectures at over forty universities and colleges throughout the United States.
Adnan creates oils, ceramics, and tapestry. She has also written more than ten books of poetry and fiction, including Sitt Marie-Rose, which has been translated into six languages.

Since 1964, Etel Adnan has been making "artist's books" : folding rolls of Japanese paper onto which she brings together poems and paintings with inks, pastels, and/or watercolors. On these folded "books," poetry becomes handwriting and drawing, and the accompanying paintings create a visual reading of the poems.

Adnan writes in both French and English. She has published an enormous range of works including the internationally recognized novel about the Lebanese Civil War, Sitt Marie Rose.

She lives in Sausalito, California, Paris, and Lebanon.

Expositions personnelles (sélection)

Marin County Civic Center, San Rafael, CA; Galerie Samy Kinge, Paris; Kufa Gallery, London; Gallery 50 x 70, Beirut, Lebanon.

Expositions collectives (sélection)