Celebrating Etel Adnan

About the Doodle:

Adnan was the daughter of a Greek mother and Turkish father who were migrants to Lebanon. Adnan had a diverse upbringing as she spoke Greek and Turkish at home, attended a French language school, and lived in a primarily Arabic speaking country.

At age 23, she moved to France to study philosophy and art at University of Paris and then moved to the states to continue her studies at the University of California Berkeley and Harvard. She eventually returned to Lebanon to serve as a journalist and editor for the newspapers Al Safa and L’Orient le Jour, where she helped develop a section dedicated to culture in Lebanon and the Middle East.

As time went on, Adnan delved deeper into the world of visual art and gained widespread praise for her vibrant abstract paintings, which were inspired by the landscapes of California and Lebanon. Today, her art can be found in museums and galleries all over the world — from Paris to Beirut, Hong Kong to London, and beyond.

As a writer, her novels and poems explored themes of identity, memory, feminism, and the human experience. These written works spanned across languages, cultures, continents, reflecting the many identities and experiences she had. She authored several books and poetry collections such as Moonshots (1966), Sitt Marie Rose (1978), Paris, When It’s Naked (1993), and Master of the Eclipse (2009) among others.

Etel Adnan’s contributions to the arts earned her several different awards and accolades including the Lambda Literary Award in 2013, France’s Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2014, the Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award in 2020, and more. She leaves behind a rich legacy of artistic and literary achievements that continue to capture and inspire audiences today.