Olivéa-Hommage à la Déesse de L’Olivier
2018
The work is displayed as part of the permanent exhibition
General
Oil on canvas
16 paintings of 29,5 cm diameter each
Long term loan from the Saradar Collection, Paris/Beirut
Writer and painter Etel Adnan (1925–2021) lived between Beirut, Paris, and the United States and rose to prominence as one of the most significant voices of the cosmopolitan Arabic diaspora for both her poetry and painting work. Alongside her multilingual writing body of work, she was also a self-taught painter. She developed a distinct painting practice, crafting small canvases of pure chromatic fields shaped with the use of a spatula. Often, her works amount to repeated depictions of the same landscape at different times and with different colours. Combining calligraphy, writing and painting, she has additionally become known for her folding notebooks (leporello) that portray her repeating motifs in a serial arrangement. Her landscapes are equally a proof of her love for nature, a sentiment she explores in texts such as Le Prix que nous ne voulons pas payer pour l’amour (The Cost for Love We are Not Willing to Pay).
Etel Adnan’s Olivéa – Hommage à la Déesse de l’Olivier (2018) consists of sixteen round canvases depicting olive trees. Their number corresponds to the number of super-centenarian olive trees in the village of Bchaaleh in South Lebanon, which, according to the local tradition, have existed since Noah’s Biblical Deluge. With this work, Adnan pays homage to the olive tree by recognising its paramount importance for the Mediterranean and world culture in general. As she notes, “If we want to save our planet, the Earth, we must begin with this benignant tree with its enchanting beauty”.
Etel Adnan was born in Beirut in 1925 to a Greek mother and a Syrian father, refugees after the destruction of Smyrna. She went to a French Catholic school in Beirut, while in the 1950s, she studied philosophy at the University of Paris. She continued her studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. She wrote essays, novellas, and poetry in Arabic, English, and French, with the best-known examples being the novel Sitt Marie-Rose (1977), which won the France-Pays Arabes Award, and the poetry collection Sea and Fog, which received the California Book Award for Poetry in 2013. She was self-taught in painting. Already in the 1950s, she had developed a distinct practice that was recognised internationally and presented extensively following her participation in Documenta 13 in 2012. Thereon, she realised many solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions. Recent solo exhibitions (selection): Guggenheim Museum, New York (2021); MUDAM, Luxembourg (2019); Serpentine Gallery, London (2016); Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris (2016). Group exhibitions (selected): Istanbul Biennale (2015), Whitney Biennial (2014). Her works can be found in many private and public collections, such as the Centre Pompidou and the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, among others. In 2014, she was proclaimed a Knight of the Order of Letters and Arts of the French Republic (Ordre des Arts et des Lettres). She died in 2021 in Paris.
The work Olivéa – Hommage à la Déesse de l’Olivier is on long-term loan from the Saradar Collection, Beirut | Paris.