As far as history goes back, art and architecture have always been interrelated disciplines. From the elaboration of the Baroque movement to the geometric framework of modernism, architects found inspiration from stylistic approaches, techniques, and concepts of historic art movements, and translated them into large-scale habitable structures. In this article, we explore 5 of many art movements that paved the way for modern-day architecture, looking into how architects borrowed from their characteristics and approaches to design to create their very own architectural compositions.
The exhibition, presenting seventy works – in all media – from each period of the artist’s career, honors five decades of the gallery showing Schwitter’s work. Hadid’s design is a reflection on the artist’s well-known, but destroyed, Merzbau, a sculpture that filled the artist’s workspace from 1923-1937. According to the Hadid’s office, “[Merzbau was] a living, inhabited collage, ever-shifting and expanding, and this was the starting point for [Zaha’s] exhibition design which pushes beyond mere random collage to embrace the unpredictable richness and the complex variegated order found in nature.” The design builds on an established relationship between Hadid and Galerie Gmurzynska; Merz following in the footsteps of an earlier exhibition space designed for another of the architect’s inspirations, Kasimir Malevich.
