Hughie Lee-Smith (September 20, 1915 – February 23, 1999) was an American artist and teacher whose surreal paintings often featured distant figures under vast skies, and desolate urban settings.

Life and career

Lee-Smith was born in Eustis, Florida to Luther and Alice Williams Smith; in art school he altered his last name to sound more distinguished. Shortly after his birth, Lee's parents divorced and his mother moved to Cleveland to pursue a music career. As a child Lee-Smith moved to Atlanta to live with his grandmother. She was strict with Lee-Smith, and when carnivals came to town she would not allow him to attend, an event which he describes as an experience which "must have sunk into my unconscious and manifested itself years later in my paintings: the balloons, ribbons, pennants." At age 10 he moved to Cleveland with his mother and grandmother (once his mother established her music career), and attended classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and later the Cleveland Institute of Art and the John Huntington Polytechnic Institute, the Art School of the Detroit Society of Arts & Crafts (Center For Creative Studies, College of Art & Design)and Wayne State University (BA 1953.) Lee-Smith attended East Technical High School (where he was president of the art club and ran track with Jesse Owens) during the tenure of Harold Hunsicker as head of its art department. As a youth, he was active at Karamu as a dancer, performer, studio enrollee, and teacher trainee. In 1938, Lee-Smith graduated with honors from the Cleveland School of Art and worked for the Federal Arts Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Like many WPA artists, Lee-Smith was concerned about the contribution art could make to the struggle for social justice and racial equality, and he created a series of lithographs on this theme. Lee-Smith's “The Artist’s Life No.1,” a 1939 lithograph, is one of his early masterpieces. It is currently featured in an exhibition called “Hardship to Hope: African American Art from the Karamu Workshop” at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, 2929 Richmond Road, Beachwood, Ohio. Lee-Smith's first job as an art teacher was at Claflin College in Orangeburg, S.C., in 1940. Newly married to Mabel Louise Everett, they returned to Orangeburg. The pay was so poor for a man with a new bride that Lee-Smith gave up and moved to Detroit. He got a job as a core maker in one of Henry Ford's factories. He worked there for about three years before joining the Navy for a 19-month stint. Stationed at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center north of Chicago, Lee-Smith was one of three African-American artists commissioned to do “morale-building paintings” of Blacks in the Navy. While in the Navy he painted a mural entitled ''History of the Negro in the U.S. Navy.'' He also did portraits of the first Black naval officers. Hughie Lee-Smith and Mabel Louise Everett divorced in 1953. Although his divorce was amiable, it had a “deathlike” impact on Lee-Smith. After his long journey and hard work he received a Bachelor of Science, in Art Education (Graduated 1953) from Wayne State University in Detroit. Many years after winning a top prize for painting from the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1953, he recalled

I was no longer called black artist, Negro artist, colored boy. When I won that prize, all of a sudden, there was no longer a racial designation.

In 1958 Lee-Smith moved to New York City, and taught at the Art Students League for 15 years.Cotter, Holland. The New York Times, obituary, March 1, 1999
/ref> Later he moved to Cranbury, New Jersey. His paintings evidenced the influence of

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

, Social realism, and

Surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

at the service of a personal expression that was poignant and enigmatic. Of his characteristic work, Holland Cotter wrote in '' The New York Times'',

Mr. Lee-Smith's paintings usually have spare settings suggestive of theater stages or bleak urban or seaside landscapes. Walls stretch out under gray skies. Men and women, as lithe as dancers, seem frozen in place. Most are dressed in street clothes; some wear exotic masks. Children frequently appear, as do props reminiscent of circuses. The work has an air of mystery associated with the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico and Edward Hopper.

In 1967 Lee-Smith became an associate member of the National Academy of Design, then the second African-American to be elected to the Academy, after Henry Ossawa Tanner, and was made a full member four years later.Jet, obituary, March 22, 1999
/ref> In 1994 he was commissioned to paint the official portrait of David Dinkins, former

Mayor of New York City The mayor of New York City, officially Mayor of the City of New York, is head of the executive branch of the government of New York City and the chief executive of New York City. The mayor's office administers all city services, public property ...

, for the

New York City Hall New York City Hall is the Government of New York City, seat of New York City government, located at the center of City Hall Park in the Civic Center, Manhattan, Civic Center area of Lower Manhattan, between Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway, Park R ...

.Jet, March 22, 1999
/ref> Retrospectives of Lee-Smith's work were mounted by the New Jersey State Museum and the

Studio Museum in Harlem The Studio Museum in Harlem is an American art museum devoted to the work of artists of African descent. The museum's galleries are currently closed in preparation for a building project that will replace the current building, located at 144 W ...

in 1988, and Ogunquit Museum of American Art in 1997. Lee-Smith's works are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

, the Detroit Institute of Art, Howard University, the San Diego Museum of Art, and

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is a research library of the New York Public Library (NYPL) and an archive repository for information on people of African descent worldwide. Located at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard (Lenox Avenue) b ...

in Manhattan. Lee-Smith met Patricia Thomas-Ferry, a student at the Art Students League, in the spring of 1978. Late that year they rented an apartment near the League, and they married a few days before Christmas. This third marriage would be happy and lasting, and the couple would make their home in New Jersey in 1981. In 1999 Lee-Smith died of cancer in

Albuquerque, New Mexico Albuquerque ( ; ), ; kee, Arawageeki; tow, Vakêêke; zun, Alo:ke:k'ya; apj, Gołgéeki'yé. abbreviated ABQ, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Its nicknames, The Duke City and Burque, both reference its founding in ...

. He was 83. Work In 1945, Lee-Smith had his first one-man exhibitions at the South Side Community Art Center and at Snowden Galleries in Chicago. Paintings * ''Man Running'' 1965, oil on canvas * ''End of Act One'' 1984, Oil on canvas * ''Double Exposure'' 1995, oil on canvas * ''Stranger'' 1957–1958, oil on canvas * ''Bouquet'' 1949, oil on canvas *
Artist’s
Life No.2'' 1939, Lithograph Prizes * Cleveland Museum ** Freehand Drawing, 3rd Prize, 1938 ** Linoprint, Honourable Mention, 1938 ** Lithography, 3rd Prize, 1939 ** Lithography, 2nd Prize, 1940 * Atlanta University ** Oil Painting, Purchase Prize, 1943 * Detroit Institute of Art ** Oil, Anthony Maiuello Prize, 1951 * EMILY LOWE AWARD, Oil, 1957 * Allied Artists of America ** Oil, Allied Artists Prize, 1958 * American Society of African Culture ** Oil, 1st Purchase Prize 1960

Notes

References

The African American Registry, biography

Jet, obituary, March 22, 1999

* ttps://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/04/nyregion/art-a-painter-finally-gets-his-due.html Raynor, Vivien. The New York Times, December 4, 1988
Lebowitz, Cathy. Art In America, review, January 2001

Art and Architecture of New Jersey, biography
*King-Hammond, Hughie Lee-Smith, Pomegranate Communications, Inc. 2010 *Hughie Lee-Smith, Biographical material, Cleveland Arts Museum *The Russell and Rowends Jelliffe Collection: Prints and Drawings from The Karamu Workshop, 1929-1941

External links

''Confrontation'', Hunter Museum of American Art''

Smithsonian American Art MuseumWorks of Hughie Lee-Smith at
Cleveland Public Library {{DEFAULTSORT:Lee-Smith, Hughie 1915 births 1999 deaths People from Cranbury, New Jersey People from Eustis, Florida Painters from Florida Wayne State University alumni 20th-century American painters American male painters Modern painters People of the New Deal arts projects Artists from Cleveland Painters from Ohio 20th-century American male artists 20th-century African-American painters