Biography

Hughie Lee-Smith was an African-American painter best known for his depictions of figures in desolate or surreal landscapes, rendered in a manner similar to Giorgio de Chirico and Edward Hopper. His works appear to be frozen moments from a film, pregnant with meaning but within an indiscernible narrative. “I think my paintings have to do with an invisible life—a reality on a different level,” the artist once said. Born on September 20, 1915 in Eustis, FL, Lee-Smith moved around as a child before settling in Cleveland where he attended classes at the Cleveland Art Institute. He went on to receive a BA from Wayne State University in Detroit, and was subsequently the subject of retrospectives at the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Today, his works are in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Detroit Institute of Art, among others. Lee-Smith died on February 23, 1999 in Albuquerque, NM.