Google Doodle Honors Indian-American Artist Zarina Hashmi on her 86th Birthday

GOOGLE DOODLE TODAY, 16 JULY, 2023: Today’s Google Doodle pays homage to Zarina Hashmi, an Indian American artist and printmaker recognized for her significant contributions to the minimalist art movement. The Doodle, illustrated by Tara Anand, a guest artist from New York, showcases Hashmi’s mastery of abstract and geometric shapes to explore the concepts of home, displacement, borders, and memory.

Zarina Hashmi: Celebrating Her Birth Anniversary with Lesser-known Facts

1. Hashmi was born on this day in 1937 in the charming town of Aligarh in India.
2. Her peaceful upbringing took a tragic turn with the partition of India in 1947. Along with millions of others, Zarina’s family had to flee to Karachi in the newly formed Pakistan.
3. At the age of 21, Hashmi married a young foreign service diplomat and embarked on a journey that allowed her to travel the world. During her time in Bangkok, Paris, and Japan, she delved into the world of printmaking and explored art movements such as modernism and abstraction.
4. In 1977, Hashmi settled in New York City and became a passionate advocate for women and artists of color. She joined the Heresies Collective, a feminist publication that merged art, politics, and social justice.
5. Hashmi also taught at the New York Feminist Art Institute, a pioneering institution that provided equal educational opportunities for female artists. In 1980, she co-curated the groundbreaking exhibition “Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the United States” at A.I.R. Gallery, which highlighted the work of diverse artists and provided a platform for female artists of color.
6. As a prominent figure in the Minimalism Art movement, Hashmi gained international recognition for her captivating woodcuts and intaglio prints that depicted semi-abstract images of the houses and cities she had lived in.
7. Her artwork often incorporated inscriptions in her native Urdu, as well as geometric elements inspired by Islamic art.
8. Hashmi’s art continues to inspire people worldwide and can be found in prestigious permanent collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.