Google doodle celebrates Indian-American artist Zarina Hashmi’s 86th birthday

Search engine giant Google on Sunday celebrated the 86th birth anniversary of Indian-American artist and printmaker Zarina Hashmi, widely recognised as one of the most significant artists associated with the minimalist movement, with a special doodle.

Born on this day in 1937 in the small Indian town of Aligarh, Zarina’s family was forced to flee to Karachi in the newly formed Pakistan during the Partition in 1947.

“Today’s Doodle celebrates Indian American artist and printmaker Zarina Hashmi… Illustrated by New York-based guest artist Tara Anand, the artwork captures Hashmi’s use of minimalist abstract and geometric shapes to explore concepts of home, displacement, borders, and memory,” said the search engine in its description of the doodle.

At 21, Hashmi married a young foreign service diplomat and began travelling the world. She spent time in Bangkok, Paris, and Japan, where she became immersed in printmaking and art movements like modernism and abstraction, according to Google.

She moved to New York City in 1977 and became a strong advocate for women and artists of colour and taught at the New York Feminist Art Institute, which provided equal education opportunities for female artists.

In 1980, Hashmi co-curated an exhibition at A.I.R. Gallery called “Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the United States”. This ground-breaking exhibition showcased work from diverse artists and provided a space for female artists of colour.

A part of the Minimalism Art movement, Hashmi became internationally known for her striking woodcuts and intaglio prints that combine semi-abstract images of houses and cities where she had lived.

People all over the world continue to contemplate Hashmi’s art in permanent collections at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among other distinguished galleries.

Hashmi died in London from complications of Alzheimer’s disease on April 25, 2020 at the age of 83.