Hughie Lee-Smith
Hughie Lee-Smith (b. 1915, Eustis, Florida; d. 1999, Albuquerque, New Mexico) was a painter whose surreal compositions reflect the social alienation of mid-twentieth century American life. Lee-Smith came of age in the midst of the Great Depression, spending his early life between Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit. He studied at the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts and the Cleveland School of Art, and became involved in Karamu House, the oldest running Black theater in the nation. The Midwest left an indelible influence on Lee-Smith–his early Social Realist paintings often made reference to its expansive gray skies and industrial architecture. Teaching would take him to the East Coast, where he was an instructor at the Art Students League in New York City and later acting head of the art department at Howard University in Washington, DC, a stronghold of the Black Arts Movement. Even as his environment changed, the visual vernacular of the Midwest remained in Lee-Smith’s work: pendants and ribbons from traveling carnivals, crumbling brick buildings, and vast landscapes in which figures, lost in thought, stand with their backs to the viewer. His paintings bear traces of Surrealist influence, in particular Georgio de Chirico, as well as the French Neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Lee-Smith left behind an idiosyncratic body of work: his painted world abides by the otherworldly logic of dreams and symbols, evidence of a lifelong effort to see beyond the real.
Hughie Lee-Smith’s work has been exhibited in retrospectives at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (1988), the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton (1988), and at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Maine (1997). His work is held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Smithsonian Museum, Washington, DC; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Detroit Institute of Art; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the San Diego Museum of Art; Howard University, Washington, DC; and the Schomburg Center of Research in Black Culture, New York, among others.
Born 1915, Eustis, Florida
Died 1999, Albuquerque, New Mexico
EDUCATION
1953
BS in Art Education, Wayne State University, Detroit
1938
BA, Cleveland Institute of Art, Ohio
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2026
Karma, New York, Still Lifes
2022
Karma, New York (traveled to Karma, Los Angeles)
2013
Muskegon Museum of Art, Michigan, Hughie Lee-Smith: Meditations
2011
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, Hughie Lee-Smith: The 1950s, Major Paintings
2000
June Kelly Gallery, New York,Memorial Exhibition
1997
Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Maine, Hughie Lee-Smith: A Retrospective, organized by Dr. Michael Culver
Milton Rhodes Gallery, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Of time and space… paintings by Hughie Lee-Smith
1996
Malcolm Brown Gallery, Shaker Heights, Ohio, Hughie Lee-Smith: Cleveland Visionary
1995
Bristol-Myers Squibb Gallery, Princeton, New Jersey, Hughie Lee-Smith: Overview, 1949–1995
1994
June Kelly Gallery, New York, Watercolors
1993
Flushing Town Hall, New York, Hughie Lee-Smith Selected Paintings
1991
June Kelly Gallery, New York, New Paintings
1990
Greenville Museum of Art, South Carolina
1989
June Kelly Gallery, New York, The Presence of Something Profound and Mysterious
Armory Gallery, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg
1988
New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, Hughie Lee-Smith Retrospective Exhibition (traveled to: Chicago Public Library Cultural Center, 1989; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, 1989; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, 1989)
June Kelly Gallery, New York, Hughie Lee-Smith: The Romantic Realist
Malcolm Brown Gallery, Shaker Heights, Ohio
1987
Isobel Neal Gallery, Chicago
1986
Art Center of Battle Creek, Michigan
1984
Malcolm Brown Gallery, Shaker Heights, Ohio
Community Renewal Team Craftery Gallery, Hartford, Connecticut
The Century Association, New York
1982
Summit Gallery of Art, New York
1977
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo
1974
San Giuseppe Gallery, Mount St. Joseph University, Ohio
1973
Grand Central Art Gallery, New York
1971
J.L. Hudson Company, Detroit, Michigan
Arwin Galleries, Detroit, Michigan
1969
Bergman Gallery, University of Chicago
1968
Grand Central Art Galleries, New York
1966
Detroit Artists Market, Michigan
Forsythe Gallery, Ann Arbor, Michigan
1958
Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Janet Nessler Gallery, New York
1954
Anna Werbe Gallery, Detroit, Michigan
Forsythe Gallery, Ann Arbor, Michigan
1953
Garelick Gallery, Detroit
1950
Ten Thirty Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio
1945
South Side Community Art Center, Chicago
Snowden Gallery, Chicago
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025
Karma, Thomaston, Maine, A Certain Form of Hell
2024
Karma, Thomaston, Maine, A Particular Kind of Heaven
2022
Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, Our Walls: Real and Imagined
Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Malibu, California, The Cultivators: Highlights from the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection
Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum, Saginaw, Michigan, Harold Neal and Detroit African American Artists, 1945 Through the Black Arts Movement
2021
Art Students League, New York, Creating Community: Cinque Gallery Artists
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, In American Waters: The Sea in American Painting (traveled to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas)
Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, Extra Ordinary: Magic, Mystery and Imagination in American Realism
David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora, College Park, Maryland, American Landscapes
2019
Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan, Detroit Collects: Selections of African American Art from Private Collections
Dayton Art Institute,Ohio, For America: Paintings from the National Academy of Design (traveled to New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut; Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida; Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, Tennessee; New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe; Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento)
Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York, Self in the City: Highlights from the Collections of the Hudson River Museum and Art Bridges
Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, Black Refractions: Highlights from The Studio Museum in Harlem (traveled to Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina; Kalamazoo Institute of Arts Michigan; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts; Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City; Frye Art Museum, Seattle)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, African American Art in the 20th Century (traveled to Dubuque Museum of Art, Iowa; Rollins Museum of Art, Winter Park, Florida; Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania; Wichita Art Museum, Kansas; Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York)
2018
Canton Museum of Art, Ohio, African American Masterpieces: Permanent Collection Highlights
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Something to Say: The McNay Presents 100 Years of African American Art
2016
Muskegon Museum of Art, Michigan, Common Ground
2014
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, Solitary Soul
2012
David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora, College Park, Maryland, Successions: Prints by African American Artists from the Jean & Robert Steele Collection
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, Full Spectrum: Prints from the Brandywine Workshop
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, African-American Art: Harem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era and Beyond
2011
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, Otherworldliness
Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, Beachwood, Ohio, Hardship to Hope: African American Art from the Karamu Workshop
2008
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, African American Art: 200 Years
2006
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, Building Community: The African American Scene
Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan, American Perspectives: Highlights of Works by African American Artists from the Collection of the FIA
2003
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, X
2002
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, IX
2001
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, VIII (traveled to Texas Southern University Museum, Houston)
2000
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, VII (traveled to Appleton Museum of Art, Ocala, Florida
1999
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, VI (traveled to Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan
Robert Henry Adams Fine Art, Chicago, African American Art in Chicago, 1900–1950
1998
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, V (traveled to Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana)
1997
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, IV (travelled to Fisk University Galleries, Nashville, Tennessee)
Katonah Museum of Art, New York, Revisiting American Art: Works from the Collections of Historically Black Colleges and Universities
1996
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, III
1995
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, II (traveled to Long Beach Museum of Art, California)
1994
Krasdale Gallery, White Plains, New York, Empowerment: The Art of African American Artists
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks
San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas, The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art (travelled to El Paso Museum of Art, Texas; Michael C. Carlos Museum, Atlanta, Georgia; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee)
1983
Evans-Tibbs Collection, Washington, DC, Surrealism and the Afro-American Artist
1978
Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, New York/Chicago: WPA and the Black Artist
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Block Museum of Art, Evanston, Illinois
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio
Canton Museum of Art, Ohio
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Michigan
Flint Institute of Art, Michigan
Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan
College for Creative Studies, Detroit, Michigan
Atlanta University, Georgia
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
National Academy of Design, New York
Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York
The Gallery at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Princeton, New Jersey
New Jersey State Museum, Trenton
Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, New Jersey
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania
Kutztown State College, Pennsylvania
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida
Howard University, Washington, DC
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
National Museum of the United States Navy, Washington, DC
University of the District of Columbia
Banneker-Douglass-Tubman Museum, Annapolis, Maryland
National Gallery for Foreign Art, Sofia, Bulgaria
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Art Institute of Chicago
Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, Florida
San Diego Museum of Art, California
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington
Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Massachusetts
PUBLICATIONS
2023
Hughie Lee-Smith
Karma, New York
2010
Hughie Lee-Smith
Pomegranate Communications, Petaluma, California
1995
Hughie Lee-Smith: An Overview 1949–1995
Bristol-Myers Squibb, Princeton, New Jersey
1988
Hughie Lee-Smith: Retrospective Exhibition
New Jersey State Museum, Trenton
1988
Joining Forces: Hughie Lee-Smith and John W. Rhoden
Montclair State College Art Gallery, New Jersey
