Norman Zammitt: Gradations

As a pioneer of the Light and Space movement, artist Norman Zammitt (1931-2007) extensively explored color relationships and geometric patterns through his abstract paintings and sculptures.

Beginning in the mid-1960s, Zammitt produced an innovative series of transparent sculptures made of painted sheets of glass and acrylic plastic. These layered constructions led to his experiments during the mid-1970s through the 1980s creating paintings with neatly defined bands of sequential colors.

While investigating different approaches to mixing and arranging colors, Zammitt consulted with mathematicians at the California Institute of Technology, and developed a method of blending colors based on logarithmic progressions. This exhibition features examples of the artist’s rigorously composed hard-edge band paintings as well as his looser, more spontaneous “fractal” paintings inspired by chaos theory.

Exhibition curated by Sharrissa Iqbal, Associate Curator, Modern & Contemporary Art, Palm Springs Art Museum.

Norman Zammitt, Triptych XI, 1992, acrylic on canvas, 132 x 252 inches, Collection of Palm Springs Art Museum, gift of Marilyn and William Lasarow, 10-1998a-c.