June Harwood Paintings at The Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College
Although Harwood was a key figure in the West Coast Hard Edge movement, this is the first museum retrospective of her work. It focuses on various series of her 50 year career.
It was Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley, and John McLaughlin who received much of the attention in the late 1950s Hard Edge scene. There are known as The Four Abstract Classicists, from the 1959 exhibition of the same name. It was actually Harwood's art critic husband, Jules Langsner, who not only curated that exhibition but has credited with the term "Hard Edge." I'm not sure it would be appropriate to call her the fifth Beatle of the Abstract Classicists but she was included in Langsner's second exhibition, California Hard-Edge Painting. The show also included Florence Arnold, John Barbour, Larry Bell, John Coplans, Helen Lundeberg, Dorothy Waldman, and the original four abstract classicists.
It was my first time visiting the Benton. If the John Mason at the entrance and this Harwood exhibition are any indication, it's definitely a space to watch.