“The Solomon R. Guggenheim presents Etel Adnan: Light’s New Measure. This focused survey, installed along the first two ramps of the museum’s rotunda, marks the first solo exhibition of the artist’s work at a New York City institution.

Over the course of a lifetime that spans almost a century, Etel Adnan’s creative and intellectual vision has been expressed in many forms. In addition to being a visual artist, she is a renowned poet, a prominent journalist, and the author of Sitt Marie Rose (1977), one of the defining novels of the modern Arab world. Adnan’s biography is notable for its rich convergence of cultural influences. She was born in Beirut in 1925 to a Greek mother and Syrian father; grew up speaking French, Arabic, and Greek; and as an adult has lived for extended periods in Lebanon, the United States, and France. She began to paint in the late 1950s, while working as a professor of philosophy in Northern California. It was a period when, in protest of France’s colonial rule in Algeria, she renounced writing in French and declared that she would begin ‘painting in Arabic’.” — Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Etel Adnan: Light’s New Measure is organized by Katherine Brinson, Daskalopoulos Curator, Contemporary Art, and Lauren Hinkson, Associate Curator, Collections.

Images courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.