Understanding Zaha

Image: About: Blank Magazine

Some insight into the striking”Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Perelman Building: the work of the Soviet Constructivists.

That work is the subject of a new exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. Click through this slide show of architecture and paintings in the show.

Hadid wrote her thesis on the tectonics of one of the constructivists, Kasimir Malevich. You see this influence immediately upon entering the exhibit on the print fabric on a pair of sofas. There is the earth, as Hadid understands it, not as a rectilinear plane, but as upheaval and motion.

Hadid will be here November 19 to the receive the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Collab Award for Design Excellence.

About the author

Nathaniel Popkin is co-founder of the Hidden City Daily and author of three books of non-fiction, including Philadelphia: Finding the Hidden City (with Peter Woodall and Joseph E.B. Elliott) and two novels, Everything is Borrowed and Lion and Leopard. He is co-editor of Who Will Speak for America, an anthology forthcoming in June 2018, and the senior writer of the film documentary "Philadelphia: The Great Experiment."

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