The Mountain is emblematic of the most inspired paintings in her abundant production of the last twenty years, with its vibrant and contrasting colors, between the blue of the Mediterranean and the red sun of Lebanon. Although small in size, its composition is vast, planetary. This mountain, tirelessly sung about, painted, and drawn by Etel, is Mount Tamalpais, which she saw when opening the window, adorned with flowerpots on the sill, of her house in Sausalito near San Francisco: it was her landscape of paradise lost, dreamed of, or hoped for. During her Californian exile, she had adopted this universal symbol, which consoled and reassured her in the absence of Mount Sannine, a memory of her childhood and adolescence in Lebanon, which she could see from everywhere and in every season. In her essay Journey to Mount Tamalpais (1985), Etel writes: “Mount Tamalpais has become my home. For Cézanne, the Sainte-Victoire was no longer a mountain, but an absolute, a painting. She adds: “I need to move around the mountain because I am water. The mountain must remain, and I must leave. Standing on Mount Tamalpais, I participate in the rhythms of the world. Everything seems right. I am in harmony with the stars. For better or for worse, I know, I know.” Etel had become a pantheist over time, like the Lebanese-American poet Khalil Gibran of The Processions or The Prophet. The Mountain is the self-portrait of this luminous woman, firmly anchored to the Earth and her head turned toward the Universe, distant and yet so near.

I met Etel Adnan (Lebanon 1925-Paris 2021) in Paris in March 1989, at my first exhibition of Benanteur’s paintings, which she and her partner, the artist Simone Fattal, knew and admired. Etel was a great writer and artist, a longtime friend in Paris, a wonderful person. Her feminist activism was clear, determined, calm, and very positive. A universalist wisdom inspired her writings and her fascinating interviews. Her literary and artistic creativity flowed naturally. Aware of her own value, she remained amazed and happy by her late-blooming success. Etel was very loyal and discreetly generous, not only to her many friends, but also to young women artists, writers, translators, gallery owners, and feminist activists. I witnessed this during the last thirty years of her life.

In June 2018, Claude and France Lemand donated 26 of her works to the Arab World Institute Museum: 10 historical leporellos, 4 oil paintings (including her iconic 2014 work, The Mountain), and 12 large watercolors and ink drawings on paper. To date, this donation constitutes the largest museum collection in the world. Loan requests have come from major museums across Europe: after the Arab World Institute in Paris and the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Pompidou-Metz, the museums in Munich and Düsseldorf, the Museum of Modern Art of Paris, the Grand Palais-Centre Pompidou, and others.

Etel Adnan, The Mountain, 2015. Oil on canvas, 27 x 35 cm. IMA Museum. Donated by Claude & France Lemand. © Etel Adnan Estate. Courtesy Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris.