Black History Month: Daily Updates

Hughie Lee-Smith (1915-1999) Artist

Hughie Lee-Smith was a classically trained artist, beginning his art education at the Cleveland Institute of Art during the 1920s.  Upon completing his studies there, he worked as an artist for the Works Project America, which was a part of then-President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” program to provide employment for out-of-work Americans.  Like other WPA artists at the time, Lee-Smith felt the pull of social justice causes, wishing to illustrate how art could call attention to inequality.   

Lee-Smith is known for his neo-surrealist interpretation of social and cultural alienation, rejection, and isolation.  This sense of alienation and isolation was influenced by his experiences as a  Black artist, even though he lived nearly his entire life in urban areas.  Inspired by the work of artists such as Edward Hopper, Lee-Smith examined social alienation in a variety of settings, including an unidentified rural area in one of his better-known works, The Stranger.  This work evokes feelings of loneliness and the disconnection individuals find in a vast rural location.  The race of the individual was intentionally ambiguous, conveying the feelings of isolation not only experienced by African Americans, but of all people, or as he describes it, the  “everyman.”  

Much of Lee-Smith’s art was created in the midwest.  In fact, his first solo gallery show was held in Chicago in 1945.   The Art Institute of Chicago has one of his works in their collection;  Desert Form, which was painted in 1945, that provides another example with his focus on desolate locations and alienation.  In his time living in Chicago,  Lee-Smith also found a community of like-minded thinkers at the Southside Community Art Center, where he hung out with fellow artist Rex Goreleigh, and the poet Gwendolyn Brooks.

In addition to the Art Institute of Chicago, you’ll find his work in many other museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and Howard University.  

-- post contributed by Ken Orenic, Library

In their words

“I think my paintings have to do with an invisible life—a reality on a different level,”

​“In my case, aloneness, I think, has stemmed from the fact that I’m black. Unconsciously it has a lot to do with a sense of alienation.”

“I’m not a narrative painter. That is to say, I don’t paint stories. What I tried to do was project a feeling, an emotional sense.”

Learn more

READ:  A History of African-American Artists: From 1792 to the Present 

WATCH: Fred Jones and Hughie Lee Smith - BLACKLITE Episode 5 (11 min)

VIEW: Hughie Lee-Smith’s work is viewable on Google https://bit.ly/3u0562F