Biography

Born in Sturgis, Michigan in 1915, Hassel Smith studied at the California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA in 1936, and later joined the faculty there during the heady “golden age” (1945-50) of abstract expressionism. In 1948, Smith was included in an exhibition of abstract art at the San Francisco Museum of Art (now Modern Art), the first documented group exhibition of abstract expressionism in America, which spawned (at least in unsympathetic quarters) the term “drip and drool school.” Four years later, Smith was forced to resign from the CSFA due to his iconoclastic views and established his own atelier at his Mission Street studio. Partly due to his political views, Smith moved permanently to England in 1966, where he taught at the West England College of Art, Bristol, England. Smith’s later works, particularly his almost musical graphite drawings— among the last he produced before he died in 2007—demonstrate the taut certainty of his unfaltering hand. Smith’s work is represented in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Berkeley Art Museum; Oakland Museum of California; and the Tate Gallery, London.

(SJMA Collections Committee, 2009)

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