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Zaha Hadid’s Early Paintings, Drawings will be exhibited at the Science Museum and Serpentine Gallery

United Kingdom Architecture News - Dec 05, 2016 - 22:32   22941 views

Zaha Hadid’s Early Paintings, Drawings will be exhibited at the Science Museum and Serpentine Gallery

Zaha Hadid's early paintings, illustrations and drawings are ready to be presented in two different locations of London. The Winton Gallery at the Science Museum of London and the Serpentine Sackler Gallery will host two major exhibitions dedicated to early works of Zaha Hadid. The two major retrospective will be opened on two places simultaneously on Thursday, December 8, 2016.  

Titled Zaha Hadid: Early Paintings and Drawings exhibition can be visited until February, 2017 at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery. The exhibition focuses on Zaha Hadid's early painting and drawings realised between the years 1950 and 2016. 

Zaha Hadid’s Early Paintings, Drawings will be exhibited at the Science Museum and Serpentine Gallery

Confetti ‘The Peak’, Hong Kong, China 1982/1983. Image © Zaha Hadid Architects

Zaha Hadid is 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, will reveal her as an artist with drawing at the very heart of her work and will include the architect's calligraphic drawings and rarely seen private notebooks with sketches that reveal her complex thoughts about architectural forms and relationships. 

The show will focus on Hadid's early works before her first building was erected in 1993 (the Vitra Fire Station in Germany), presenting paintings and drawings from early 1970s to the early 1990s.

Zaha Hadid’s Early Paintings, Drawings will be exhibited at the Science Museum and Serpentine Gallery

Wireframe Sculpture Perspective – 2010 ‘Victoria City Aerial' Berlin, Germany, 1988. Image © Zaha Hadid Architects

The exhibition will take place at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, renovated and extended by Zaha Hadid Architects in 2013. A select number of institutions and museums across the world will join in this timely homage to Zaha Hadid.

Zaha Hadid’s Early Paintings, Drawings will be exhibited at the Science Museum and Serpentine Gallery

Hafenstrasse Development; Hafenstrasse Development, Hamburg, Germany, 1989. Image © Zaha Hadid Architects

Drawing and painting were fundamental to Hadid's practice. Influenced by Malevich, Tatlin and Rodchenko, she used calligraphic drawings as the main method for visualising her architectural ideas. 

For Hadid, painting was a design tool, and abstraction and investigative structure for imagining architecture and its relationship to the world we live in. These works on paper and canvas unravel an architecture that is seen in the characteristic lightness and weightlessness of her buildings.

Zaha Hadid’s Early Paintings, Drawings will be exhibited at the Science Museum and Serpentine Gallery

Concept Painting, Cardiff Bay Opera House, Wales, UK, 1994-1996. Image © Zaha Hadid Architects

Conceived as Hadid's manifesto of a utopian world, the show reveals her all-encompassing vision for arranging space and interpreting realities. Technology and innovation have always been central to the work of Zaha Hadid Architects, and many of Hadid's paintings prefigure the potential of digital process and the software required to render virtual reality.

Zaha Hadid’s Early Paintings, Drawings will be exhibited at the Science Museum and Serpentine Gallery

Sketch Selection from Sketchbook 2001. Image © Zaha Hadid Architects

''We are honoured to be presenting this exhibition of our friend and long-term collaborator Zaha Hadid here at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, designed by her practice in 2013. Her contribution to architecture as a pioneer and visionary cannot be overstated, and her declaration that 'there should be no end to experimentation' has become a mantra for the Serpentine Galleries as it looks to the future'', said Hans Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine Galleries Artistic Director and Yana Peel, CEO. 

Zaha Hadid’s Early Paintings, Drawings will be exhibited at the Science Museum and Serpentine Gallery

‘Vision for Madrid’, Spain, 1992. Image © Zaha Hadid Architects

The exhibition will coincide with the opening of Zaha Hadid Architects' much anticipated Mathematics: The Winton Gallery at the Science Museum, which will explore how mathematicians, their tools and ideas have helped to shape the modern world. 

Zaha Hadid’s Early Paintings, Drawings will be exhibited at the Science Museum and Serpentine Gallery

Zaha Hadid's other exhibition Mathematics: The Winton Gallery will be presented at the Science Museum, London. Image © Zaha Hadid Architects

This outstanding new gallery spans 400 years of human ingenuity and brings mathematical history to life through the design and architecture of its displays. Conceived as a wind tunnel for the largest object in the gallery including a Handley Page aircraft from 1929-the space follows the lines of airflow around ti in a stunning display of imagined aerodynamics. 

Other projects in the gallery range from intriguing hand-held mathematical instruments to 19th-century human skulls, covering a time-span from the Renaissance to the present day.

Mathematics: The Wonton Gallery is curated by David Rooney, who previously curated the award-winning Codebreaker exhibition about the life and legacy of Alan Turing. The exhibition will be on view at the Science Museum, London as of December 8, 2016. 

Zaha Hadid’s Early Paintings, Drawings will be exhibited at the Science Museum and Serpentine Gallery

Mathematics Gallery Science Museum, 2014-2016, London. Image © Zaha Hadid Architects

Top image: 'Metropolis', 1988. Image © Zaha Hadid Architects

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