A modal solution is presented to the aeroelastic equations of very flexible wings in intrinsic form, that is written using inertial velocities and strains as primary variables. After assuming 2-D thin-airfoil aerodynamics on the wing sections, it is shown that the equations of motion can be written in canonical state-space form on the intrinsic modal coordinates without any matrix inversion and including only quadratic nonlinearities. Flutter characteristics are readily obtained from a linearized description of the dynamics equations, and the approach provides an efficient way of computing the nonlinear response with large wing displacements. Both situations are exemplified numerically on the Golang wing. The use of modal coordinates will serve to highlight some of the particular characteristics of the use of intrinsic beam solutions in aeroelastic problems with geometrical nonlinearities. Copyright © 2011 by Rafael Palacios and Bogdan Epureanu.