The first retrospective exhibition of her work in Russia, 'Zaha Hadid' at The State Hermitage Museum provides unprecedented insight into the work of the late Zaha Hadid and the firm she founded 'ZHA', in a mid-career retrospective highlighting her exploration of the Russian Avant-garde at the beginning of her career, and the continuing influence of its core principles on the work of the firm 'ZHA' today.

The exhibition, in the historic Nicolaevsky Hall of the Winter Palace, showcases many of the seminal paintings, drawings, models and design objects of Zaha's forty-year repertoire; conveying the ingenuity and dynamism of her architectural projects in variety of media including film, photography and installations. 

In 2004, Zaha was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in the theatre of the State Hermitage Museum. Accepting the prize, she stated, “The spirit of adventure to embrace the new and the incredible belief in the power of invention attracted me to the Russian Avant-garde. I realized how Modern architecture built upon the break-through achieved by abstract art as the conquest of a previously unimaginable realm of creative freedom. The idea that space itself might be warped and distorted to gain in dynamism and complexity without losing its coherence and continuity.” 

With its far-reaching experimentation, Zaha directly engaged with the work of the Russian Avant-garde early in her career, developing an artistic inventiveness that transcends the context of the Russian social experiment and continues a narrative of a new spatial perception. 

The exhibition outlines the pioneering research that permeates the architect’s career. The Peak Club in Hong Kong (unrealized, 1982-83) represents an early manifestation of her exploration of Kazimir Malevich’s compositional techniques of fragmentation and layering. Further projects include the Rosenthal Centre for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati (completed, 2003), Phaeno Science Centre in Wolfsburg (completed, 2005), BMW Central Building in Leipzig (completed, 2005), MAXXI: Museum of XXI Century Art in Rome (completed, 2010), London Aquatics Centre (completed, 2011) and Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku (completed, 2012) continue Zaha's ongoing research towards a new architecture that addresses the increased complexities and dynamism of our future. 

As the exhibition explores the architect’s forty-year career, we see that, far beyond simply continuing the unfinished project of Modernism and the unfettered spirit of the Avant-garde, Zaha transcended these ideas, creating an entirely new spatial paradigm; an architecture of the future.