Richard Smith was a British artist and printmaker who represented an avant-garde movement. He became famous for his so-called ‘kite paintings’, big three-dimensional constructions often similar to sculptures in form.
Smith successfully combined the principles of Color Field painting and those of Pop Art.
Background
Richard Smith was born on October 27, 1931, in Letchworth, Bedfordshire, United Kingdom. He was a son of Charles Smith, a printer and typesetter at the House of Commons during the Blitz in the First World War, and Doris Chandler, a nurse. Doris cured Charles who was injured in the war.
Education
Richard Smith obtained his general education at the Hitchin Boys' Grammar School in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom. In 1948, he entered the Luton School of Art in Bedfordshire. After two years of studies there, he joined the Royal Air Force to complete his required military service in Hong Kong.
On his return, he enrolled at the Saint Albans School of Art in 1952 and spent here two years. To pursue his artistic training, Smith subscribed at the post-graduate program of the Royal College of Art in London. He had studied there for three years.
The start of Richard Smith’s career can be counted from the military service at the Royal Air Force from 1950 to 1952. Five years later, Smith joined the professor’s staff of the Hammersmith College of Art where he taught art for one year. At the end of the decade, the young artist received the Harkness Fellowship which allowed him to travel to the United States, including New York City.
While there, Smith earned his living by painting and teaching. He found the inspiration for his works in colorful advertising billboards and magnificent shop windows. Even the titles were partly borrowed from famous brands and trademarks, as it was in the case of Revlon and Panatella. That is why Smith was often classified as a pop-art artist by art critics. His debut solo exhibition took place at the Green Gallery (doesn’t exist nowadays) in 1961. Soon after, Smith came back to the United Kingdom.
On his return, Richard Smith find a job at the Saint Martin's School of Art where he worked as a teacher till 1963. He also collaborated with the photographer Robert Freeman on his 8mm colour film on cigarettes and other commercial packaging called ‘Trailer’. This period, Smith created his first two-dimensional paintings, ‘Vista’, then came ‘Piano’ and ‘Gift Wrap’ which surface went out of the canvas area. The critics appreciated such kind of an experiment often calling Smith a sculptor although he positioned himself only as a painter.
The popularity provided the artist with a number of exhibitions including the shows at Kasmin Gallery in New York City, the Tate Gallery the following year and again in New York City at the Richard Feigen Gallery in 1966. Smith also opened his collection of Biennales starting from the one in Venice, then in São Paulo the next year. At the beginning of the new decade, he was invited to represent the United Kingdom at Venice Biennale again. He also worked as an artist-in-residence at the Universities of Virginia and of California.
In the early 1970s, Richard Smith elaborated his famous ‘kite paintings’, the compositions made from several canvases of unusual forms joint together by cords and structures of aluminum tubing. By 1975, Smith came back to the United States installing first in Tribeca and after in West Broadway.
Smith took an active part in the artistic life of the city. In addition to public exhibitions, he accepted a lot of commissions, including the one from Michael Chow to decorate his restaurants with three installations. In the end of the 1990s, Smith produced some pieces for Terence Conran’s project of Bluebird Garage complex. By 1995, the artist moved to Patchogue, New York where he established a studio and worked till the end of his life. Five years later, he joined the Flowers Gallery which represented his art in London and New York.
Quotations:
"What intrigued me wasn’t the nitty-gritty, down dirty popular culture. It was the high end. These beautiful ads for Smirnoff vodka and glamorous films and store windows and CinemaScope."
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"Where the first great abstract painters, including Kandinsky, Delaunay and Mondrian, derived their forms and colour harmonies essentially from nature, half a century later Richard Smith was at the forefront of a development in painting that took its cues not from the natural world but from visual stimuli already processed through culture. Smith’s joyful embrace of glamour and prismatic colour after the grey decade and a half of postwar austerity, brought him within the orbit of Pop Art at its very inception and assured him an important place in its early history." Marco Livingstone, art historian and art curator
"[Smith was] unique in his ability not only to revive and maintain the tradition, but also to push it forward to the point that it can stand with the most progressive, radical and inventive work of his time." Barbara Rose, American art historian and art critic
Connections
Richard Smith married Betsy Scherman who came from New York City in 1964. The family produced two children, both sons, named Edward and Harry. They were the fathers of six Smith’s grandchildren, Rose, Emma, Noah, Adeline, Charlotte and Julia.