The works of the late artist Hamid Zénati and his plethora of forms, patterns, colors, materials, and techniques are on display at Munich’s Haus der Kunst. The exhibition, All-Over, is the first institutional exhibition dedicated to the work of the artist Hamid Zénati.
Image courtesy of Contemporary and.
Hamid Zénati was born in 1944 in Constantine, Algeria. From 1971 to 1973, he studied photography at the former Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für Fotografie in Munich. In the 1970s, he began his work as a translator and self-taught artist in Algiers. He spent many years living between Germany and Algeria due to the difficult sociopolitical situations he experienced both in Europe and in his own country. Over the course of his six-decade career, he created over 1000 works of art. Zénati died in 2022 in Munich, Germany.
In his lifetime, Zénati worked in painting, textiles, interior, and fashion design, to photography. His artistic practice was always driven by an anarchic impetus to create. The exhibition features work from an almost six-decade-long career and provides insight into the artist’s distinct cosmos for the first time. The selection of works in the exhibition focuses on the artist’s unique formal language developed in his textiles; it also presents objects that function as keys to access Zénati’s visual cosmos, as well as a selection from his photographic archive that highlights the artist’s joy in experimentation, which will be accessible both in the exhibition space and online.
Image courtesy Hamid Zénati Estate/Maximilian Geuter.
Zénati’s work is characterized by the sheer inexhaustible abundance of forms, patterns and the combination of colours, materials and techniques. As a self-taught artist, Zénati created his powerful yet playful compositions without conceding to predetermined hierarchies or value systems. He drew upon and incorporated everything that crossed his path and triggered his imagination. Zénati developed a distinct perspective that questions the existing boundaries between styles, genres, as well as fine and applied arts while remaining mostly unknown and living a diasporic life in perilous conditions.
The exhibition is on view till July 23 at Haus der Kunst.
