Rediscovering Norman Zammitt, a 1960s Visionary of the Light and Space Movement

American art in the 20th century was dominated by the New York art scene—think Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop art—but in the mid-1960s, a then little-known movement originating in Southern California began to gain broader critical attention: Light and Space.

Formed by a loosely associated group of artists, the Light and Space movement reflected a preoccupation with visual perception, as well as penchant for material experimentation. While artists like Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, and James Turrell have become some of the best-known of the movement with their large-scale installations and unconventional use of both artificial and natural light, artist Norman Zammitt, who died in 2007, was a pioneering colorist whose work reflected the core ethos of the Light and Space. It was less a style than an experience, a kind of art that dissolved boundaries and asked viewers to step into a world of perception itself. This was Light and Space: a sensorial field that expanded art beyond canvas and object into the realm of atmosphere and phenomena.

Though Zammitt enjoyed considerable success in his lifetime, his name has since edged closer to the margins of art history. Decades after his work was first shown in New York, Karma gallery in Chelsea recently debuted a new show dedicated to the late artist, “A Degree of Light.” Comprised of two of his most important bodies of work—his laminated-acrylic pole sculptures and hard-edge “Band Paintings”—the exhibition revisits Zammitt’s artistic innovation and introduces his practice to a whole new audience.

“This is the first time in almost 60 years that Zammitt’s had a show in New York, and the first real survey of his work here,” said Karma gallery owner Brendan Dugan. “I hope people leave seeing him as a visionary who pushed materials and ideas in ways that were very much of his moment but also ahead of it.”

Who Was Norman Zammitt?

Born in Toronto, Canada, in 1931, to an Italian father and Mohawk mother, at seven years old the family moved to Kahnawá:ke Mohawk Territory outside of Montreal, which was followed by a brief stint in Buffalo, New York, before ultimately relocating to Los Angeles County.

Showing an interest in drawing and animation from an early age, his artworks and cartoons won him a range of amateur competitions by the time he finished high school, leading him to enroll at Pasadena City College. His aspirations to pursue art professionally were disrupted by the Korean War, during which time he served a one-year tour of duty as an aerial reconnaissance photographer. It is difficult not to miss how that vantage point—absorbing the sweep of atmosphere, the curving horizon, and the shifting veil of color from above—later informed his sensibility, deepening his awareness of light as both subject and medium. During his tour, he continued to develop his practice and returned to the school in 1956. Initially intending to study commercial art, he instead changed course and studied fine art at the Otis College of Art and Design (formerly the Otis Art Institute), receiving his M.F.A. in 1961.

In the year before graduating, Zammitt joined the roster of the prestigious La Cienega Boulevard gallery, helmed by pioneering Modern and contemporary art dealer Felix Landau. Zammitt’s earliest works from this period were mixed-media abstractions, but he soon turned to more figurative works and even experimented with elements of Surrealism through what are referred to as his “Boxed Figure” paintings. These paintings used the form of body parts—foot, head, arm, nose, eye—depicted on individual boxes arranged against a monochromatic background. When first exhibited at the University of New Mexico, they were subject of a complaint and censorship as they were considered controversial.

Evolving Practice

In the mid-1960s, Zammitt first began exploring the possibilities of plastic. Though plastic was invented around the turn of the century, the post-war period saw an explosion in the material’s popularity. The artist began transitioning away from his figurative works and toward constructions made from layered, transparent sheets of painted glass and acrylic.

In 1968, the same year he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, he began making his cast laminated acrylic “poles,” lithe, monolithic sculptures that feature unique spectrums of banded color. Measuring only an inch or two wide and upwards of nine feet tall, while Zammitt was restricted by the number of colors the commercial manufacturer had (which otherwise predominantly catered to clients ordering signs), he still managed to create an incredibly diverse range color combinations. Their dimensions push opticality to its limit, as from a distance the eye automatically moves across the arrangement of colors, and up close the poles extend beyond the range of vision.

A core element of “A Degree of Light,” their inclusion alongside Zammitt’s more well known “Band Paintings” illuminate the artist’s inquiry into perception itself. Within the context of his other glass and plastic works, they also underscore the significant role his practice played in the Finish Fetish style—also known as the “L.A. Look”—which occupied a space at the intersection of Pop art and Minimalism and is frequently referenced as an extension of Light and Space. Within this style, which too emerged in the 1960s, artists using innovative materials and fabrication processes put greater emphasis on the work’s surface, favoring smooth, seamless finishes.

“The poles are central to his practice,” said Dugan. “The forms quite literally catch and echo light. They’re also part of the bigger Finish Fetish story in Los Angeles and they’re important chronologically too. Zammitt began working in plastics in 1964; years before almost anyone else, which is something that was overlooked at the time but feels significant now.”

Light and Space

The late 1960s also saw Zammitt begin to produce cast laminated acrylic sculptures that foreshadowed the stye of painting he would soon master. The petite (ca. 1970–72) in the show at Karma echoes the precise banding of color and sleek finish that could be achieved through the medium and juxtaposed with (ca. 1976) illustrates a particular range of hues that he would continually return to.

Starting in 1973, Zammitt turned back to painting as it offered him a degree of color control that he couldn’t achieve with acrylic, but unlike his early work these were wholly abstract, made up of bands of color but with sporadic deviations into other precise geometric shapes, as can be seen in the 1977 , which features oblong triangles of color arising out of horizontal strips that anchor the lower half of the painting.

While the “Band Paintings,” which he continued to make through the late 1980s, often evoke blazing sunsets or shadowy sunrises, and the artist cited the skies of the American Southwest as a source of inspiration, Zammitt’s aim was not to create landscapes. Instead, they were a starting point. The Light and Space movement was focused on the perception of light and space rather than their representation, and, in Zammitt’s case, an opportunity to explore color at its limits.

Zammitt’s choices of color were anything but random or purely intuitive. Seeking to draw a connection between nature and color theory, he used mathematic equations, logarithms, and eventually early computer systems and programs to home in on specific sequences of color. He also developed a proprietary taping device that allowed him to execute the lines between colors—but, upon closer inspection, one will see that the colors do not exactly abut one another but instead overlap, albeit minimally, creating subtle gradations. Despite the precise processes and fastidious lines, his compositions still appear nonmechanical.

“I think what surprises me most about Zammitt’s paintings is how present his hand is,” Dugan noted. “Even though he used a lot of technology when making them, like the early Atari computer he used to calculate pigment ratios, you can still feel the artist in the paintings. They are meticulous, but human.”

The result of using nature as the foundational inspiration for this series of work is a profound sense of emotion. While the paintings might initially call to mind the natural landscape, careful and prolonged looking presents an opportunity to reflect on the effects of visual perception and the myriad experiences it brings.

A Rising Legacy

During his lifetime, Zammitt exhibited regularly at and had his work acquired by several major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), but for years his legacy faltered and he went without gallery representation for decades—until recently, as a flurry of events bring his oeuvre back to the limelight.

Last year, the artist was the subject of the retrospective “Gradations” held at the Palm Springs Art Museum, and this year he is included in the 12th Site Santa Fe International, “Once Within a Time.” And later this year, a new publication dedicated to his practice is set to be released.

Together, the rise in attention paid to Zammitt indicates a shift in the art historical canon, one that recognizes him as a pioneer of not only of the Light and Space Movement but 20th century abstraction overall.

When asked why he thinks this cultural resurgence and renewed interest in Zammit and his practice is happening now, Dugan observed: “I think part of it has to do with his focus on the spiritual. His work lets you approach formalism through the mystical rather than modernist reduction. And his life story is fascinating. He grew up on the Kahnawá:ke Reservation near Montreal, served as an aerial photographer in the Air Force, and pushed back against the censorship of his ‘Boxed Figure’ paintings, which you can see at Site Santa Fe right now. Those threads give scholars and audiences new ways to connect with the work.”

Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com