Summer – E3

In 2016, to celebrate her exhibition at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London, Etel Adnan created two
edition runs of her drawing ‘Summer’ (1970), one as a series of prints and another as woven tapestries.
This abstract design, colourful and intricate, showcases Adnan’s commitment to chromatic
experimentation and her interest in the expressive potentials of shape and perception. Her abstract
composition, with strong reds, blues and yellows crawling across the surface, produces transformative
visions that evoke, as the title suggests, memories and feelings of summer.

Like the rest of her oeuvre, the ‘Summer’ series stems from an engagement with different practices,
intellectual concerns and Eastern and Western cultural influences. A particularly strong source of
inspiration was the dichotomy of Arab and American practices. Adnan’s interest in tapestry stems from
her childhood in Beirut, where she first saw the rich colours and textures of Persian rugs. She later
developed her skill in the 1960s in Northern California where she attended weaving courses, studying
with the renowned tapestry artist Ida Grae, and even wrote literary texts on her experience.

Adnan’s tapestry art conveys the same intimacy and lyricism as her canvases, as well as their social
engagement. Some of her designs were conceived as public artworks, bringing together Middle Eastern
and Native American elements.

Adnan’s ‘Summer’, like all her tapestry designs, is not copied from her canvases but is an independent
work that constitutes a separate dimension of her practice. Her tapestries are monumental yet graceful,
with impressionistic swaths of colours and shapes activating the surface. Effectively, Adnan’s pictorial
language attempts to unlock the language of nature.