Seeing Hammersley whole: the octogenarian Frederick Hammersley was rediscovered by contemporary audiences at the SITE Santa Fe Biennial in 2001. With two exhibitions this fall and a retrospective in the works, the veteran abstract painter will be a well-kept secret no more

Allying link to a pivotal moment in Los Angeles art, Frederick Hammersley came to prominence in the 1959 exhibition of hard-edge painting called "Four Abstract Classicists"--the title a deliberate contrast with "Abstract Expressionists"--which opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and traveled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Along with Hammersley, the quartet included Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson and John McLaughlin. (1) Working independently, these southern California painters first discovered each other, and then found in Jules Langsner a curator who grasped their common currency. "Classicism," Langsner explained in the exhibition's catalogue, emphasizes form, the "defined, explicit, ponderable, rather than ambiguous or fuzzily suggestive." A classical composition, be added, is governed by clarity: "clarity in the relation of form to form, form to color, and form and color to space." (2) Reorganized in 1960 by Lawrence Alloway and rebaptized "West Coast Hard Edge," the exhibition went on to the Institute of Contemporary Art in London and Queen's University in Belfast.

Although he'd already been painting for 20 years, in 1959 Hammersley was the least known of the group; the others all had had previous solo museum exhibitions. During the 1960s, Hammersley, like his three compatriots, was included in thematic shows at New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum. Then he largely slipped from the national spotlight. (3) This fade-out was doubtless abetted by his leaving Los Angeles in 1968, bound not for New York but for Albuquerque. There the stubbornly independent artist found the freedom to be more productive than ever before, although he would also suspend art making for long stretches, until the time seemed right to return to the easel.

Lately, the painter has attracted considerable notice: two large and glowing Hammersleys from the 1970s beckoned to visitors entering the 2001 SITE Santa Fe Biennial organized by Dave Hickey, "Beau Monde," in which this oldest artist in the show looked more vital than many of the 20-somethings. Hammersley's work in "Beau Monde" was singled out for praise by Peter Schjeldahl in the New Yorker (Aug. 13, 2001) and pronounced a "show stealer" by Michael Duncan in Artforum (October 2001). Claudine Humblet's new survey of American abstract art accords Hammersley pages and illustrations equal to those for Rothko, Louis, Reinhardt, Kelly and Stella. (4) Lawrence Weschler has taped a series of interviews with the artist for the UCLA Oral History Program. (5)

Born in Salt Lake City in 1919, Hammersley moved to L.A. at age 21 to attend Chouinard Art School. Between 1940 and '42 he studied fine and commercial art, from academic nudes to lettering. This training fostered a love of legibility that served him well in the Army (1942-46), where he designed posters, pass cards and signs. In 1946 Hammersley studied for a term at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, during which he met Picasso, Braque and Brancusi. He returned to L.A., completing his studies at Chouinard and Jepson Art School. A rite of passage from figuration is marked by a suite of 14 still lifes (1947-48) that, much like the four bronzes in Matisse's "Backs" series, grow progressively abstract. Abstraction is likewise evident in a series of small checkerboard-patterned lithographs and self-portraits of 1949-50. Over the following years, Hammersley taught at Jepson, Pomona College, Chouinard and the University of New Mexico, where a brief period of experimentation with photography and computer drawings reflected the formal concerns of his paintings at that time.

Hammersley's mature oeuvre comprises three distinct categories, which he refers to as the "hunch" paintings (1953-59), the "geometries" (1959-64, 1965-mid 1990s) and the "organics" (1964, 1982-the present). This essentially abstract enterprise is punctuated by regular returns to figuration with self-portraits, still lifes and life drawings. All the "hunch" paintings were launched without a plan. Hammersley would lay down an initial colored form and successively add as many as 15 to 20 more shapes, each in response to the preceding one. Most "geometries" are based on a nine-square grid, a format Hammersley retained from the 1949-50 lithographs. For each square, he makes two decisions: whether or not to introduce a new color and whether or not to introduce a diagonal. These choices yield surprising variety by producing different forms within the finished composition--rectangles, parallelograms, equilateral triangles, squares, L-shapes, etc.--so that the underpinning grid disappears. By contrast, Hammersley's "organics" obey no such rules, and hardly ever employ straight lines.

While the "geometries" and "organics" differ significantly, they also complement each other, engaging in a fruitful dialogue. "Geometrics" may be up to 45 inches square, white "organics" are typically rectangular and measure less than 12 inches on the longer side. Most "geometries" are straight-lined and straight-laced (circles appear on occasion), and as a group they look self-referential; the "organics," in comparison, invite associations with morphing natural forms. Shapes and colors are neatly segregated in the "geometries," while they sometimes blend in the "organics." Hammersley's palette is restricted in the "geometrics," multihued in the "organics." The palette knife used for the "geometries" produces a smooth and gestureless finish, while the "organics" display visible brush strokes. Finally, the artist began his "geometries" as notebook sketches and later transferred them to canvas; the "organics," by contrast, are never premeditated.