Installation view of “Los Angeles Hard Edge from the Collection” with, from left, John McLaughlin’s “Untitled,” 1955; Frederick Hammersley, “Up In,” 1961; Lorser Feitelson, “Dichotomic Organization,” 1959; and Lorser Feitelson, “Magical Space Forms,” 1962

Downstairs at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Making a Scene highlights a burgeoning West Coast art scene, charting developments in abstraction and surrealism in the 1940s and 1950s (see our review here). Upstairs, two shows focusing on Los Angeles show us what happened next. Alongside the solo exhibition June Harwood Paintings, also upstairs, Los Angeles Hard Edge from the Collection recalls a pivotal moment in abstract art, showcasing works by artists like Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley, Florence Arnold, and John McLaughlin that emphasized the clarity of flat shapes, distinct colors, and sharp edges.

Western art has long shifted between balance and excess, between classicism and romanticism, and Hard-Edge painting fits within this tradition. It emerged as a response to the emotional and gestural excesses of Abstract Expressionism, focusing instead on the formal elements of shape, line, and color—more Barnett Newman, less Willem de Kooning. It was a shift toward control and precision, resembling the earlier nonobjective painting of the 1930s, which included artists like Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian.

Los Angeles became an ideal incubator for the movement. The region’s modernist architecture and distinctive light helped shape the aesthetic of flat, bright colors and precise geometric forms. Educational institutions like UCLA and the Chouinard Art Institute, along with galleries like Ferus Gallery, fostered the development of this geometric abstraction. In 1959, art critic Jules Langsner popularized the term “hard-edge” with the Four Abstract Classicists exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, featuring Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley, and John McLaughlin.

Karl Benjamin’s “Abstract Landscape,” 1955, left, and “Interlocking Forms (Yellow, Orange, Black),” 1959

Karl Benjamin’s “Abstract Landscape” (1955) embodies the vibrancy and formal precision that characterized his work at the time of the Four Abstract Classicists exhibition. The piece uses bold, curving shapes and contrasting colors to evoke an abstracted landscape. John McLaughlin’s “Untitled” (1955) offers a minimalist approach, deeply inspired by Japanese aesthetics and Zen philosophy. McLaughlin’s geometric forms, subdued colors, and use of negative space create a meditative effect, revealing his influence on the Light and Space movement that followed. Lorser Feitelson’s “Dichotomic Organization” (1959) brings structure and allusion to abstraction. The composition hints at an abstracted landscape with its red field and angular black and blue forms. Feitelson’s earlier ties to surrealism are apparent in his ability to evoke natural forms through geometry.

After the 1959 exhibition, the movement grew. The 1964 California Hard-Edge Painting exhibition, which featured eleven artists, including four women, further establishing the West Coast as a center for formal innovation. Frederick Hammersley’s “Up In,” from this period, explores the tension between simplicity and complexity. Two white circles are placed against black and gold rectangles, creating a striking contrast and Hammersley’s systematic approach to abstraction. Florence Arnold came to abstraction relatively late in life, and her involvement in the hard-edge movement marked a major phase of her artistic development. Her “Gold and Gray” (1980) showcases her mature style, in which she explored the relationships between light, color, and form. The bold yellow forms set against a muted gray background create a rhythmic, architectural composition.

Florence Arnold, “Gold and Gray,” 1980, oil on canvas, 26 x 50 in.

The exhibition also includes the work of John Barbour, a photographer included in the 1964 California Hard-Edge Painting show. Barbour captures the geometric precision of hard-edge abstraction in photography. His black-and-white print emphasizes the reduction of industrial structures into abstract forms, highlighting the versatility of hard-edge principles across mediums. Though primarily focused on painting, the exhibition also features Mabel Hutchinson’s untitled totem sculpture from 1965. While her work shares an interest in geometric shapes, the sculpture’s three-dimensionality contrasts with the flatness found in the hard-edge paintings, offering a different but complementary perspective on abstraction.

Hard-edge abstraction exerted an influence that radiated beyond Los Angeles, including in the Intermountain West. Don Olsen, who for a decade was one of the most prominent Utah artists working in a vigorous mode of expressive abstraction, surprised his audience with an exhibition of 15 hard-edge works at Phillips Gallery in 1966. You can see the change in his style in two works currently on display at David Dee Fine Arts in Salt Lake City: an expressionistic collage from the 1950s and a hard-edge work from 1976. The collage was discovered at an estate sale several years ago by Darryl Erdmann, a contemporary Utah artist heavily influenced by California hard-edge (see Erdmann’s work at Tanner Frames in Salt Lake City).

California has never quite been able to compete with New York City as an art world mecca, but the hard-edge movement helped establish the city’s bona fides as it became a center for innovation in abstract art and laid the groundwork for subsequent movements such as Light and Space and Minimalism.

Don Olsen, “Enigma Variation,” 1976, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 60 in., at David Dee Fine Arts.

Los Angeles Hard Edge, Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, Logan, through Dec. 12

Shawn Rossiter

The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.