Google Doodle honours printmaker Zarina Hashmi; All about her life's work

Google Doodle is honouring the legacy of Zarina Hashmi, an Indian American artist and printmaker. She is known for her contributions to the minimalist movement. The Doodle, created by guest artist Tara Anand from New York, captures Hashmi’s minimalist abstract and geometric style, which delved into themes of home, displacement, borders and memory. 

2 things you need to know

• Zarina Hashmi's art explores home, displacement, borders, and memory through geometric shapes.
• She was an advocate for women and artists of colour, leaving a lasting legacy.

From India to international influences

Zarina Hashmi was born today in 1937 in Aligarh, a small town in India. Her childhood was marked by idyllic surroundings until the partition of India in 1947. This traumatic event forced her family to move to Karachi, Pakistan. 

At the age of 21, she married a foreign service diplomat, embarking on a journey that took her to Bangkok, Paris, and Japan. It was during her time in Japan that she developed a deep interest in printmaking. Zarina engaged with art movements like modernism and abstraction. 

Advocacy and exhibition curation

In 1977, Hashmi settled in New York City, where she became a prominent advocate for women and artists of colour. She joined the Heresies Collective, a feminist publication that explored the intersections of art, politics, and social justice. Hashmi also taught at the New York Feminist Art Institute, championing equal education opportunities for female artists. 

( Zarina Hashmi in her home studio in New York | Image: Twitter)

One of her notable contributions was co-curating the groundbreaking exhibition Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the United States at A.I.R. Gallery in 1980. The exhibition provided a platform for female artists of colour and showcased diverse works.

Hashmi’s art, characterised by striking woodcuts and intaglio prints, featured semi-abstract depictions of houses and cities she had lived in. Her works often incorporated inscriptions in her native Urdu and drew inspiration from Islamic art’s geometric elements. 

Today, people worldwide can admire Zarina Hashmi’s art, which is featured in permanent collections at prestigious galleries such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Sadly, Zarina Hasmi passed away in London on April 25, 2020 due to complications from Alzheimer’s disease. Nevertheless, her artistic legacy continues to resonate, offering insights into themes of identity, belonging and the human experience.