1. Hughie Lee-Smith was an American artist and teacher whose surreal paintings often featured distant figures under vast skies, and desolate urban settings.
16 Facts About Hughie Lee-Smith
1. 2.
Shortly after his birth, Hughie Lee-Smith's parents divorced and his mother moved to Cleveland, Ohio, to pursue a music career.
3.
Hughie Lee-Smith attended East Technical High School, during the tenure of Harold Hunsicker as head of its art department.
4.
Newly married to Mabel Louise Everett, Hughie Lee-Smith returned with his wife to Orangeburg.
5.
The pay was so poor for a man with a new bride that Hughie Lee-Smith gave up and moved to Detroit.
6.
Hughie Lee-Smith got a job as a core maker in one of Henry Ford's factories.
7.
Hughie Lee-Smith worked there for about three years before joining the Navy for a 19-month stint.
8.
Hughie Lee-Smith did portraits of the first Black naval officers.
9.
In 1958, Hughie Lee-Smith moved to New York City, and taught at the Art Students League for 15 years.
10.
Hughie Lee-Smith's paintings evidenced the influence of Cubism, Social realism, and Surrealism at the service of a personal expression that was poignant and enigmatic.
11.
In 1967, Hughie Lee-Smith became an associate member of the National Academy of Design, at the time the second African American to be elected to the Academy, after Henry Ossawa Tanner, and was made a full member four years later.
12.
Retrospectives of Hughie Lee-Smith's work were mounted by the New Jersey State Museum and the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1988, and Ogunquit Museum of American Art in 1997.
13.
Hughie Lee-Smith's works are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Detroit Institute of Art, Howard University, the San Diego Museum of Art, and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Manhattan.
14.
Hughie Lee-Smith met Patricia Thomas-Ferry, a student at the Art Students League, in the spring of 1978.
15.
In 1999, Hughie Lee-Smith died of cancer in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
16.
In 1945, Hughie Lee-Smith had his first one-man exhibitions at the South Side Community Art Center and at Snowden Galleries in Chicago.