[SOLD] Zaha Hadid – Early Drawings and Paintings

One of the rarest collections of work by the Iraqi-British architect, published in 2016, showcasing her early drawings and paintings.

This particular book was produced to accompany a special exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London from December 2016-February 2017, only months after her death in March 2016.

Published by the Serpentine Gallery and Koenig Books in 2016. Hardback, 168 pages. In very good condition. With colour and B&W images of the architect’s work, accompanied by analysis and interview text.

“Hadid is 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, revealed her as an artist with drawing at the very heart of her work, and included the architect’s calligraphic drawings and rarely seen private notebooks with sketches, which reveal her complex thoughts about architectural forms and their relationships. The show focused on Hadid’s early works before her first building was erected in 1993 (Vitra Fire Station in Germany), and presented her paintings and drawings from the 1970s to the early 1990s. A select number of institutions and museums across the world joined in this timely homage to Hadid.

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 an investigative structure for imagining architecture and its relationship to the world we live in. 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. Conceived as Hadid’s manifesto of a utopian world, the show revealed her all-encompassing visions of arranging space and interpreting realities.”