Untitled (Beirut)

2010 - Painting (Painting)

24 x 30 cm

Etel Adnan

Adnan’s paintings are simple images with bold contrasting colors and rich textures. This particular work has an iconic feel and a strong physical presence in spite of its diminutive size. All of her paintings are small but, like Howard Hodgkin’s work, their intensity gains from their diminutive size. However small they are, they are large in scale and impact. This painting may recall the sunset in Beirut just as it refers to a small confined but defined mass within a larger sea, perhaps in itself some kind of political statement. It is stark in its contrasts but rich in color. The central pattern of horizontal bands may recall national flags, however without referring to any one in particular. Unlike Albers’s work, there is no sense of gradation of color nor forms increasing or decreasing in size but, like Albers, Adnan is manifestly interested in the way in which one color may influence and impact another. A tension between the expansive and the restricted and between the horizontal and the vertical make this a very satisfying and dynamic image.

Etel Adnan was born on February 24, 1925 in Beirut and died in Paris on November 14, 2021. She was a Lebanese American artist and writer. Since the 1960s, Etel Adnan had been making accordion-fold books, or leporellos, that meld visual and verbal observation, fusing the artist’s parallel practices in painting and writing as she transcribed poems and records unfolding landscapes and urban spaces.

Colors:

• tension.n.03
• abstraction.n.04
• color.n.01
• horizontal.n.01
• bayrut.n.01
• vertical.n.01
• lebanese contemporary artists