June Harwood Paintings

August 24 - December 14, 2024

June Harwood refined a style of abstraction and compositional rigor that she had started developing around 1960. This style eventually became known as “Hard-Edge,” a term coined in 1959 by critic and curator Jules Langsner (whom Harwood married in 1964). Langsner also described the style as Abstract Classicism, in contrast to New York City’s Abstract Expressionist movement. Hard-Edge painting was characterized by flat planes of color defined by sharp borders, uniform paint application, bold colors, and pure abstraction.

Harwood was born in Middleton, New York, in 1933 and graduated from Syracuse University in 1953. She then moved to Los Angeles and remained in the city until her death in 2015. After experimenting with collage, she transformed that medium’s rigidity and sharp lines into painted shapes on canvas, arriving at her version of Hard-Edge painting by the early 1960s. The style in general is characterized by abstract, flat shapes that abut and interlock with one another, precisely painted crisp lines, and smooth planes of color.

June Harwood: Edging Into View is a survey of Harwood’s work, with an emphasis on her better-known Hard-Edge work of the 1960s and 1970s. The exhibition will include several recent donations to the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art collection by the June Harwood Charitable Trust. In addition, a smaller exhibition of works by Harwood’s peers in the NEHMA collection, most notably, Frederick Hammersley, Lorser Feitelson, Helen Lundeberg and John McLaughlin, will also be on view.

A catalogue accompanying the exhibition will include essays by curator and art historian Daniel Cornell, writer and critic Christopher Knight, curator Rebecca McGrew, and curator and June Harwood Charitable Trust Trustee Dennis Reed.