Zarina

Zarina Hashmi, known professionally as Zarina, was an Indian-American artist and printmaker based in New York City. Her work spans drawing, printmaking, and sculpture. Associated with the Minimalist movement, her work utilized abstract and geometric forms in order to evoke a spiritual reaction from the viewer.

Born Zarina Rashid on 16 July 1937 in Aligarh, British India to Sheikh Abdur Rashid, faculty at Aligarh Muslim University, and Fahmida Begum, a homemaker, Zarina earned a degree in mathematics, BS (honours) from the Aligarh Muslim University in 1958. She then studied variety of printmaking methods in Thailand, and at Atelier 17 studio in Paris, apprenticing to Stanley William Hayter, and with printmaker Tōshi Yoshida in Tokyo, Japan. She lived and worked in New York City.

During the 1980s, Zarina served as a board member of the New York Feminist Art Institute and an instructor of papermaking workshops at the affiliated Women's Center for Learning. While on the editorial board of the feminist art journal Heresies, she contributed to the "Third World Women" issue.

Zarina died in London from complications of Alzheimer's disease on 25 April 2020.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023