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Hughie Lee-Smith

$ 60.00

Hughie Lee-Smith’s body of work spans nearly seven decades. He came of age in the midst of the Great Depression, spending his early life primarily between Cleveland and Detroit. He was in Chicago from 1943–45 where he enlisted in the Great Lakes Naval Station. The Midwest left an indelible influence on Lee-Smith, whose Social Realist paintings made reference to its expansive gray skies and industrial architecture. He was involved in several projects that were recipients of Works Progress Administration funding: Karamu House in Cleveland, the oldest running African American theater in the nation, and the Southside Community Art Center in Chicago, where he would cross paths with Charles White, Gordon Parks, and Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, among others. Eventually teaching would take him to the East Coast, where he was artist in residence at Howard University in Washington, DC and later an instructor at the Art Students League of New York.

Text by Hilton Als, Steve Locke, Lauren Haynes, Leslie King-Hammond. Conversation with Kellie Jones, Reggie Burrows Hodges, LeRonn P. Brooks


Karma Publications
Hardcover, 392 pages
ISBN 9781949172911