AzizArt Jan2020

Visual art
Adnan also works as a painter, her
earliest abstract works were
created using a palette knife to
apply oil paint onto the canvas –
often directly from the tube – in
firm swipes across the picture's
surface. The focus of the
compositions often being a red
square, she remains interested in
the "immediate beauty of
colour".In 2012, a series of the
artist's brightly colored abstract
paintings were exhibited as a part
of documenta 13 in Kassel,
Germany.
In the 1960s, she began
integrating Arabic calligraphy into
her artworks and her books, such
as Livres d’Artistes . She recalls
sitting for hours copying words
from an Arabic grammar without
trying to understand the meaning
of the words. Her art is very much
influenced by early hurufiyya
artists including; Iraqi artist, Jawad
Salim, Palestinian writer and artist,
Jabra Ibrahim Jabra and Iraqi
painter Shakir Hassan al Said, who
rejected Western aesthetics and
embraced a new art form which
was both modern and yet
referenced
traditional culture, media and
techniques.
Inspired by Japanese leporellos,
Adnan also paints landscapes on to
foldable screens that can be
"extended in space like freestanding
drawings".
In 2014, a collection of the artist's
paintings and tapestries were
exhibited as a part of the Whitney
Biennial at the Whitney Museum of
American Art.
Adnan's retrospective at Mathaf:
Arab Museum of Modern Art in
Doha, titled "Etel Adnan In All Her
Dimensions" and curated by Hans
Ulrich Obrist, featured eleven
dimensions of Adnan's practice. It
included her early works, her
literature, her carpets, and other.
The show was launched in March
2014, accompanied by a 580-page
catalog of her work published
jointly by Mathaf and Skira. The
catalog was designed by artist Ala
Younis in Arabic and English, and
included text contributions by
Simone Fattal, Daniel Birnbaum,
Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, as well as six
interviews with Hans-Ulrich Obrist.