Zaha Hadid: Early Paintings and Drawings
Serpentine Galleries and Zaha Hadid Design present an exhibition of paintings and the rarely seen drawings of the pioneering and visionary architect Zaha Hadid
Drawing, Architectural Design and the Unbuilt
Zaha Hadid was widely regarded as a pioneering and visionary architect whose contribution to the world of architecture was ground-breaking and innovative. The Serpentine presentation, first conceived with Hadid herself, reveals her as an artist who placed drawing at the very heart of her work and includes the architect’s calligraphic drawings and rarely seen private notebooks with sketches that reveal her complex thoughts about architectural forms.
Zaha Hadid: Early Paintings and Drawings, Installation View (2016)Serpentine
The show focuses on Hadid’s early works before her first building was erected in 1993 (Vitra Fire Station in Germany) and presents her paintings and drawings from the 1970s to the early 1990s.
Zaha Hadid: Early Paintings and Drawings, Installation View (2016)Serpentine
The exhibition takes place at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, renovated and extended by Zaha Hadid Architects in 2013.
Orange Explosion on White, Multi-coloured on White, More Black Explosion, Orange Explosion on Black (1992) by Zaha HadidSerpentine
Drawing and painting were fundamental to Hadid’s practice. Influenced by Malevich, Tatlin and Rodchenko, she used drawings as the main method for visualising her architectural ideas.
Zaha Hadid: Early Paintings and Drawings, Installation View (2016)Serpentine
For Hadid, painting was a design tool, and abstraction an investigative structure for imagining architecture and its relationship to the world we live in.
Zaha Hadid: Early Paintings and Drawings, Installation View (2016)Serpentine
These works on paper and canvas unravel an architecture that Hadid was determined to realise in built structures and is seen in the characteristic lightness and weightlessness of her buildings.
Zaha Hadid: Early Paintings and Drawings, Installation View (2016)Serpentine
Zaha Hadid: Early Paintings and Drawings, Installation View (2016)Serpentine
Conceived as Hadid’s manifesto of a utopian world, the show reveals her all-encompassing visions of arranging space and interpreting realities.
© Zaha Hadid Foundation 2016
