“My paintings are intended to be additions to rather than reflections of or upon life.”
– Hassel Smith
About the artist
Hassel Smith was a celebrated and influential artist and educator based in the United States and the United Kingdom during the second half of the twentieth-century.
Artworks
A database was first established as a digital catalogue raisonné in 2009, which continues to be developed as a resource for research and public awareness of the artist, comprising artworks and related archival material.
Exhibitions
Smith exhibited widely on the West Coast as his career gathered momentum after World War Two. A solo show at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, in 1947 indicated the level of response that Smith would receive during following decades. He was the only artist based in the Bay Area to be exhibited regulary in Los Angeles at the legendary Ferus Gallery. Selected for the Whitney Bi-Annual in 1962, Smith exhibited with galleries in New York, Milan, and London during the same year. He received three retrospectives - in 1961, 1975, and 1981.
Oeuvre
Spanning seven decades from the 1930s to the late 1990s, Hassel Smith’s work, chiefly in painting, combined two contrasting periods of figuration with three major phases of abstraction.
The Foundation
The Hassel Smith Foundation was registered in March 2024 with the Charity Commission of the UK Government as a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the preservation and public awareness of the legacy of Hassel Smith.
