Looking Outwards to Look Inwards: Etel Adnan, Milton Avery, IlseD’Hollander - Until 18 April 2026
- Mar 26
- 3 min read
Victoria Miro is delighted to present Looking Outwards to Look Inwards, a three-person exhibition ofpaintingsbyEtel Adnan, Milton Avery and Ilse D’Hollander.The exhibition is accompanied by a new essayby Christopher Riopelle, Curator, National Gallery, London.
This exhibition features three artists whose livesspanned the twentieth century, working across different generations and geographies yet united by their distilled observations of placeand the journeys that inspired them. For Milton Avery (1885–1965), it was long, hot summers spent on America’s East Coastthat were an enduringsource of inspiration; for Etel Adnan(1925–2021), the memory of her childhood in Lebanon, or thefertile valleysof California, where she settled in the 1950s. Ilse D’Hollander(1968–1997)would spend hours walking and cyclingthe flat, agricultural land, rivers and canals of East Flanders, returningto her remote studio where she wouldtranslate the pathways she had travelled into paintings.
None of the paintings on view, which date fromthe 1950s to the 1990s,were madeen plein air;the artists inhabitedand experienced landscapes only to draw on them from memory back in the studio. In their canvases, the livinglandscape is translated into simplified, sometimes geometric,though alwaysintensely chargedpassages of colour.An accompanying text by Christopher Riopelle explores how landscape painting was an important route intoabstraction:‘In recent years,explanations for the spiritual origins of abstract painting have been ascendant.Yes,the aspiring soul plays a huge role herebut so too does straightforward material observation. Look long enough andlandscape falls into broad patterns of shape and colour. Follow the eye. Abstraction inevitably emerges.
About the artists
Etel Adnanwas born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1925 and died in Paris, France, in 2021. An acclaimed poet, novelistand artist,shebegan painting in her thirtiesandgained widespread recognition as a visual artist through herinclusion in Documenta 13 in 2012. Adnan developed a distinct visual language, one rooted in colour, form andintuition, as her abstract paintings sought to capture the essence of land, sea, sky and cosmos.Sherevered natureand believed that its power was revealed through colour. She described painting as an impulsive act, completingeach work in a single sitting, working indoors and entirely from memory. Laying the stretched canvas flat, like apage on a table, she applied oil paint directly with a palette knife, creating planes of colour that convey a placelesslandscape from afar and reveal a brilliant intensity upon close observation
One of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Milton Avery (1885–1965) pursued an independent andsteadfast course throughout his career.Drawing imagery from the world around him, in particular the landscapesand people he loved,hisart is as intimate and accessible as it is towering in its ambition and achievement.With hisfocus on simplified forms and use of colour as a primary means ofexpression, in the 1930sAveryprofoundlyinfluenced and won the devotion of fellowUSartists including future abstract expressionists Mark Rothko, AdolphGottlieb and Barnett Newman.Yet, while seeking to express an idea in its simplest form, Avery neversought pureabstraction for himself. Above all, he is an artist who resists categorisation. ‘I never have any rules to follow,’ hestated in 1952, ‘I follow myself.
In her short life, Ilse D’Hollander (1968–1997)created an intelligent, sensual andhighly resonant body of work.Her often small-scale canvases and works on paper are charged with references to the everyday. Yet, enlivened byan expressive, economical touch, her work resonates just as strongly as a sustained, self-reflexive enquiry intotheact of painting.D’Hollander drew upon her impressions and experience of place, particularly the Flemishcountryside where she spent the last, highly productive years of her life.Whilealluding to objects and places in theworld, as well as specificsof temperature and light, D’Hollander’s paintings are seldom immediately recognisableas straightforward landscapes.Rather, theycan be read as a series of accumulated impressions, adjustments andlayerings–a visual record of the artist’s thought processes.
Credit: Installation view, Looking Outwards to Look Inwards: EtelAdnan, Milton Avery, Ilse D’HollanderVictoria Miro Venice, San Marco 1994, 30124 Venice, Italy14 March–18April 2026 Allworks © 2026 Milton Avery Trust / Artists Rights Society(ARS), New York and DACS, London 2026.
Courtesy VictoriaMiro. © The Estate of Ilse D’Hollander. Courtesy The Estate ofIlse D’Hollander. © The Estate of Etel Adnan. Courtesy the estateof the artistand Sfeir-Semler Gallery Beirut / Hamburg