Richard Smith
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Biography
The English painter and printmaker, Richard Smith studied at the Royal College of Art from 1954 to 1957 and lived in New York through a Harkness Fellowship from 1959 to 1961. When living in New York, Smith produced paintings combining the formal qualities of Abstract Expressionist painters with references to American mass media, including its lush and seductive colours, exploitation of magnification and soft-focus effects, and stimulation of desire and fantasy. Using shaped canvases, Smith often extended his works into three-dimensional space while initially referring to advertising devices to promote products and phenomenologically entice the spectator. Smith gradually minimised his mass media references in favour of more self-contained abstract qualities of shape, support, colour, and surface. Repetition, a key aspect in many of his works, suggests Smith worked in response to Minimalism, although he resisted the call to new materials and compared his cutting and folding of canvas to large-scale origami. Bulky constructions such as these were followed from 1972 by paintings using components from tent manufacturing. These paintings focused on the physical constitution of painting as a stretched and suspended surface and played with relationships of colour and shape, drawing and structure. After resettling in New York in 1976, Smith's work evolved into larger-scale architectural decoration, often in response to commissions.
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Timeline
1931 Born in Letchworth, Hertfordshire, England
1954-57 Studies at the Royal College of Art, London
1959 Awarded the prestigious Harkness Fellowship, which prompted the artist to move to New York, where he would showcase his first solo exhibition
1963 Returns to England, where he gained acclaim for his shaped canvas artworks that protruded into space three-dimensionally
1966 Begins developing free-standing installation works known as ‘Kite’ paintings
1969 Awarded the Grand Prize at the 9th São Paulo Biennial
1970 Represents Britain at the XXXV Venice Biennale
1976 Moves back to New York, where he remains until the end of his life
2016 Dies in New York at the age of 86
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Selected Exhibitions
1957 New Trends in British Art, New York Art Foundation, Rome, Italy
1959 Place: A Collaboration, ICA, London, UK
1960 Deuxième Biennale de Paris, Musée d’art moderne, Paris, France
1961-2 The 1961 Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Paintings & Sculpture,
Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh
1962 Towards Art?, Royal College of Art, London and subsequent Arts Council Tour
1962 Contemporary Painting, Yale University, New Haven, CT
1962 Kompas II, Stedelijk Museum, Eindhoven, Holland
1962-3 British Art Today, San Francisco Museum of Art (travelled to the Dallas Museum of
Contemporary Art and Santa Barbara Museum of Art)
1963 Dunn International, Tate Gallery, London, UK
1963 VII Tokyo Biennial, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Gallery, Tokyo, and subsequent tour of Japan
1964 Pop Etc., Museum de 20 Jahrhunderts, Vienna, Austria
1964 Premio Marzotto, Baldagno, Italy, and subsequent European tour
1964 Nieuwe Realisten, Gemeente Museum, The Hague
1964 Painting and Sculpture of a Decade, Tate Gallery, London, UK
1964 The Shaped Canvas, The Soloman R.Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
1964 Englische Kunst der Gegenwart, Stadtische Kunstgalerie, Bochum, Germany
1964 Britische Malerie der Gegenwart, Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf
1964-5 Neue Realisten & Pop Art, Akademie de Kunste, Berlin
1965 Biennale des Jeunes, Musée d’art Moderne, Paris
1965 Pop Art, Nouveau Réalisme, etc., Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium
1966 26th Annual Exhibition, by the Society for Contemporary Art, ICA, Chicago, IL
1966 The Other Tradition, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh
1966 XXXIII Venice Biennale, Venice, and subsequent tour to Berne, Brussels and Rotterdam
1966-7 New Shapes of Colour, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and also Berne, Stuttgart
1968 European Painters Today, Musée des arts Décoratifs, Paris, France
1970 Contemporary British Art, Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, JP
1973 La Peinture Anglais Aujourd’hui, Muée d’art moderne de la ville, Paris, France
1974 British Painting ‘74, Hayward Gallery, London
1974 X BIENNALE INTERNATIONALE D'ART, France, Menton, Palais de l’Europe
1975 Seven Exhibitions 1961-75, Tate Gallery, London, UK
1976 Arte Inglese Oggi 1960-1976, Palazzo Reale, Milan, Italy
1977 Recent Work 1972 – 1977, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge (toured the
United States)
1986 Forty Years of Modern Art, 1945-1985, Tate Gallery, London, UK
1987 Pop Art, Royal Academy of Art, London and touring to Cologne and Madrid
1987 British Art in the 20th Century, Royal Academy of Art, London, UK
1991 Not Pop, What the Others Were Doing, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, UK
1991-92 Pop Art, Royal Academy of Art, London (travelled to Museum Ludwig, Cologne, and Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid)
1992 Ready, Steady, Go, Paintings from the Sixties from the Arts Council Collection, Foyer Galleries, Royal Festival Hall, London, UK
1992-3 Pop Art, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada
1993 The Sixties Art Scene in London, Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK
1999 Art from the '60s - This was Tomorrow, Tate, London, UK
2007 Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK
2010 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Art, London, UK
2015 Colour correction: British and American Screen-prints 1967-1975, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, USA
2015 Remembering Things Past, Islip Art Museum, New York, NY
2017 Caro, Denny, Smith, Vaux, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, UK
2018 Spring Show, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, UK
2019 Prints I Published, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, UK
2020 The 70s | Explosion of Colours, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, UK
2022 On Paper: Denny, Hoyland, Smith, Vaux, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, UK
2022 Mixed Show, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, UK
2024 8 Golden Square: Group Show, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, UK
2024 Pools on Paper, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, UK
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Works
Richard Smith
Horizon VI (blue, purple, green), 1970Lithograph on paper33 x 71 cms (13 x 28 ins)Edition of 75, Set of 6All prints come with a certificate of authenticity issued by the gallery.All prints come with a certificate of authenticity issued by the gallery.Exhibitions
'Caro, Denny, Smith, Vaux', Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, 2 February - 4 March 2017
17of 17Exhibitions
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Denny, Hoyland, Smith, Vaux: On Paper
2 February - 5 March 2022Bernard Jacobson Gallery presents Denny, Hoyland, Smith, Vaux: On Paper, an exhibition of works by Modern British icons Robyn Denny, John Hoyland, Richard Smith and Marc Vaux. Departing from the... -
Prints I published
12 February - 9 March 2019In 1969 Bernard Jacobson began his career as an art dealer, selling and publishing prints by important contemporary artists from a small fourth-floor gallery in London’s Mayfair. For a gallery... -
Prints I wish I had published
11 January - 9 February 2019In 1969 Bernard Jacobson opened his first London gallery – a fourth-floor walk-up on Mount Street, Mayfair, dealing in prints by international stars, including Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg, as... -
Some of the artists I have worked for
10 September - 5 October 2019To end the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the gallery, we are delighted to introduce a selection of works by the artists that helped shaping its success. -
Caro, Denny, Smith, Vaux
2 February - 4 March 2017Bernard Jacobson Gallery is delighted to present its upcoming exhibition Caro, Denny, Smith, Vaux, including works by gallery artists Anthony Caro, Robyn Denny, Richard Smith, and Marc Vaux. The show...
Art Fairs
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Art Basel | Basel
14 - 17 June 2012 -
Frieze Masters
17 - 20 October 2013 -
IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair
4 - 8 November 2015 -
London Original Print Fair
5 - 8 May 2016View Artsy Fair Booth -
Draw Art Fair London
17 - 19 May 2019View Artsy Fair Booth -
IFPDA Print Fair
27 - 30 October 2022Bernard Jacobson Gallery is pleased to participate in the 2022 edition of the IFPDA Print Fair at the Javits Center in New York. The gallery will present a selection of...
Publications
