SPENCER JON HELFEN | EDITH HAMLIN

1902-1992

Theme/Style California Modernism, figurative art, landscapes

Media Oils, murals

Artistic Focus A prolific painter and muralist, Edith Hamlin often punctuated her work with abstract shapes and dramatic shadows, a simplification of form and flattening of surface she first learned as a muralist. Born in Oakland, Hamlin studied at the California School of Fine Arts, and at Teacher’s College of Columbia University. While living in Arizona, and at a summer home in Utah, Hamlin painted many landscapes notable more for their evocation of mood than their reflection of actual topography.

Career Highlights

• Her work was featured in buildings throughout America, including Coit Tower and the Standard Oil Building in San Francisco, the main Amtrak office in Chicago, the Santa Fe Railroad Station in Los Angeles, the Arizona Biltmore Hotel, and the Plains Hotel in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
• Other works appeared in the Martinez, California, post office and the United States Department of Interior building in Washington, D.C.
• Hamlin's contribution to the Coit Tower Public Works of Art mural project was a depiction of hunting in California, with hunters taking aim at iridescently-colored mallard ducks, a flock of wild geese in flight, and three deer posing peacefully in a forest of large-leafed trees.
• She traveled throughout New Mexico and Arizona before returning to San Francisco in 1931.
• In 1937, she married her second husband, painter Maynard Dixon, and in 1939, the couple moved to Arizona.
• Following Maynard Dixon’s death in 1946, Hamlin returned to San Francisco, where she spent the rest of her life.

Additional biographical material and full bibliographic references are available upon request.