Hassel Smith (1915-2007)

Born in Sturgis, Michigan in 1915, Hassel Smith was a pivotal figure in post-war American abstract painting, contributing to the vibrant San Francisco Bay Area art scene alongside his much more acclaimed peers Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, and Richard Diebenkorn. Smith experienced a peripatetic childhood, relocating across the United States due to his mother’s health concerns, before ultimately settling in California as a teenager.

Smith enrolled at Northwestern University in 1932, where he initially pursued chemistry, but shifted to art history and English literature, graduating cum laude in 1936. His exposure to modern art at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, including works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, and Pablo Picasso, profoundly influenced his commitment to modernism. Concurrently, his passion for jazz, sparked by visits to Chicago’s mid-1930s dancehalls, became a lifelong influence on his rhythmic, expressive painting style.

After graduation, Smith returned to the Bay Area and enrolled at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA, now San Francisco Art Institute), studying under Maurice Sterne, whose rigorous approach to drawing fundamentally shaped Smith’s engagement with two-dimensional representation. He quickly immersed himself in San Francisco’s bohemian art scene, painting en plein air and frequenting the Black Cat Café, where he connected with artists like Henri Lenoir and Hilaire Hiler.

With the U.S. entry into World War II, Smith began work with the Farm Security Administration, where he met and married social worker June Meyers. His drawings of migrant workers from this period marked a significant development in his artistic voice. After the war, Smith joined the CSFA faculty, contributing to a dynamic period under director Douglas MacAgy, alongside colleagues like Still, David Park, and Elmer Bischoff. As a founding member of the Artist’s Guild, an artist-run gallery in North Beach, Smith helped shape the Bay Area’s post-war art scene. His 1947 solo exhibition at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, inspired by Still’s groundbreaking show at the same venue, marked his emergence as a leading figure in the movement.

The late 1940s and 1950s saw Smith’s style evolve toward large-scale abstraction, characterized by bold, rhythmic compositions that echoed his earlier jazz influences. In 1948, he exhibited alongside Bischoff and Park at the San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMOMA), cementing his regional prominence. After leaving CSFA in 1952, he continued painting in his 9 Mission Street studio, a hub for artists like Frank Lobdell and Joan Brown. His 1958 exhibition at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, curated by Walter Hopps, introduced his work to a broader audience, earning praise as one of the West Coast’s finest painters alongside Diebenkorn, Lobdell, and Edward Corbett. That same year, he began showing at the Dilexi Gallery in San Francisco, and following the death of his wife June, he increasingly poured himself into his painting.

In 1959, Smith married Donna Harrington, and their son Bruce was born in 1960. His international profile grew when gallerist and dealer Charles Gimpel facilitated exhibitions in London and at André Emmerich’s gallery in New York. Academic appointments followed, at both the University of California, Berkeley (1963) and UCLA (1965). From 1966 to 1978, he served as a senior lecturer at the Royal West of England College of Art in Bristol, with additional visiting professorships at UC Davis (1973) and teaching roles at the San Francisco Art Institute. His contributions were recognized with a 1967 National Endowment for the Arts award for “Distinguished Service to American Art."

Smith’s prolific output continued after relocating to Rode, Somerset, England in 1980, where he painted until 1997 when his health deteriorated. He enjoyed many accolades during his final years, including an honorary doctorate from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1991. Hassel Smith died on January 2, 2007, in Wiltshire, England, leaving a legacy celebrated in a 2008 memorial at the San Francisco Art Institute. His work can be found in prestigious private and institutional collections worldwide, including the SFMOMA, Dallas Museum of Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Menil Collection, Kemper Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Tate Modern, Whitney Museum of American Art, and many others.

Sources: The Estate of Hassel Smith