Etel Adnan: La Joie de Vivre

After her huge success at dOCUMENTA (13), Museum Haus Konstruktiv is taking the opportunity to honor the painted oeuvre of Lebanese artist, poet and writer Etel Adnan (b. 1925 in Beirut, lives in Paris) with a comprehensive solo exhibition for the first time in Switzerland.
Etel Adnan is often described as a wanderer between cultures, places, languages and forms of expression. In 1959, while also working as a writer, she began to get involved in painting and drawing, later going on to produce fold-out books, tapestries and Super 8 mm films. From the very start, her painting is solidly constructed, possessing a strong inner structure and organization: rectangles and cubes, laid on top of each other and beside each other, constitute her architectural vocabulary. She produces her work in one painterly flow, without making any corrections or painting over anything later. Her painting style is strict, earnest and sensitive, without any sensationalism or superfluous embellishment. Her images play with memories that take on abstract forms and nevertheless develop a high degree of emotional strength.