June Harwood

1933-2015

June Harwood was a California abstract artist known for Hard-Edge paintings of geometric forms. She was the last remaining major artist associated with the Hard-Edge group on the West Coast. Many of her early paintings consisted of shapes that were more or less rectangular, painted in silver, gray and black.  She defined her shapes with crisp lines and edges to produce a flat, geometric look.

Harwood grew up in Middletown, New York and received her B.F.A. from Syracuse University. She moved to Los Angeles where she taught at Hollywood High School. She received her M.A. in art from Cal State LosAngeles and was a professor and chairperson of Los Angeles Valley College Art Department.

Harwood painted abstract art often using acrylics, uncommon at that time, whose lines and edges were made crisp by her use of tape. Her work evolved to include loops and circles along with the application of metallic paint. Her later interest in kinetics and motion can be seen in her “Loop Series” in the 1960s.

Beginning in the 1980s and in the next decade she veered away from Hard-Edge and used painterly effects in simple landscapes, such as “Siege” 2002 and “Black Rock, Red Rock” 2003. After these works she returned to compositions in the Hard-Edge style of large interlocking color forms, rectangular shapes,  curving lines, and sliver shapes that cut diagonally through her abstract design. “Now, in late years, seeming to have come full circle, the non-objective, primal instinct has reappeared.”

Harwood was included in hard edge exhibitions in Southern California, and her work can be found in numerous college and university collections in California. Currently the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College is presenting a retrospective of her work.

Please note that the picture presented above is shown with the permission of the June Harwood Charitable Trust.