Zarina Hashmi: Unknown Facts About Indian-American Artist!

Zarina Hashmi was an Indian-born American artist and printmaker. Professionally known by the name Zarina, her work mainly comprised drawing, printmaking, and sculpture.

The semi-abstract images of the homes and cities that Zarina had lived in were combined in the renowned international woodcuts and intaglio prints, which were also accompanied by inscriptions in Urdu.

A recipient of prestigious awards such as the President’s Award for Printmaking, India, and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, New York, Zarina passed away on 25 April 2020 following complications of Alzheimer’s disease.

Physical Stats

Zarina Hashmi Family

Zarina was born on 16th July 1937 in a traditional Muslim family. Her mother, Fahmida Begum, was a housewife, while her father, Sheikh Abdur Rashid, was a professor at Aligarh Muslim University.

The youngest of five children, Zarina had an elder sister by the name of Rani. With the partition of India and the violence that occurred between Hindus and Muslims, Zarina’s father sent his family to Karachi, which was part of the newly formed Pakistan.

At the age of 21, Zarina got married to Saad Hashmi, a young foreign service diplomat. However, years later the couple drifted apart.

Relationships

As per the information available from public sources, Zarina was not involved in any relationships.

Zarina Hashmi Education

Zarina did her college studies at Aligarh Muslim University. In 1958, she graduated in mathematics with a BS (Honours) degree.

Controversies 

There are no controversies available about Zarina in public sources.

Zarina Hashmi Profession

After her marriage, Zarina traveled to different parts of the world as part of her husband’s work assignments. In 1958, the couple moved to Bangkok where she developed an interest in printmaking. Later, they were in Delhi for a short period where she made friends with the city’s art community.

In 1963, Zarina’s husband was transferred to Paris. During that time, she attended British printmaker William Stanley Hayter’s Atelier 17 workshop and got deeply involved in European modernism, including abstraction.

In 1974, Zarina traveled to Japan with a plan of staying there for two weeks. However, her stay continued for a year as she studied woodblock techniques with Toshi Yoshida in Tokyo. Zarina experimented with printmaking conventions during her stay in Japan. One of her experiments was eliminating color and printing grains and textures on scraps of wood. Zarina also punctured and slashed the surface of handmade paper. The other technique was to build it up sculpturally with pulp.

After her husband’s demise in 1977, Zarina moved to New York City. During that period, she was majorly involved in the feminist art movement and thus became a part of Manhattan’s downtown art world. Zarina also taught at the New York Feminist Art Institute.

In 1980, she organized an exhibition “ “Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the United States,” along with Ana Mendieta and Kazuko Miyamoto. It was conducted at A.I.R. Gallery, located in SoHo. (now situated in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn). 

During that time, Zarina began making themes of home and exile central to her art. Some of her renowned near-abstract images of houses include cast-paper relief titled “Homecoming”, “I Went on a Journey III” – a bronze sculpture, and “Homes I Made/A Life in Nine Lines”.

At the 2011 edition of the Venice Biennale, Zarina represented India. Since 2000, solo exhibitions were also conducted at Gallery Espace in New Delhi. In New York, Luhring Augustine Gallery represents Zarina.

Zarina Hashmi Net worth

At the time of her death, Zarina’s net worth stood at around $5 million.

Lesser Known Facts About Zarina Hashmi

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