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Black ArtistsNew York City art

Vincent Smith paintings reveal celebrations, struggles of African American life in NYC

By Chadd ScottPosted on December 30, 20210 Comments
Vincent Smith, For My People, 1965, oil on masonite, 49 x 46 inches.
Vincent Smith, For My People, 1965, oil on masonite, 49 x 46 inches.

Alexandre Gallery (291 Grand Street, New York) will present a solo exhibition of Vincent Smith paintings January 8 – February 26, 2022. “Vincent Smith: For My People” features 16 oil paintings ranging from 1954 to 1972 depicting the celebrations and struggles of African American life in New York City during this socially and politically turbulent period. Throughout his decades-long career, Vincent Smith paintings have served as narrator of the experiences of the communities of Brooklyn and Harlem in which he lived and reveled.

While struggling to support himself in his early years as an artist, Smith (b. 1929, Brooklyn, New York; d. 2003, New York, New York) lived a bohemian lifestyle, attending jazz clubs most nights of the week alongside his famed musician friends and training his eye as a careful documenter of the everyday. Later, he became involved with the fight for equality in the civil rights movement. Out of this environment was born Smith’s drive to create a true expression of his people and times, rendered in his own singular modernist language.

Common subjects in Vincent Smith paintings include neighbors, building supers, revolutionary activists, and scenes of the streets and the lively jazz world. The palettes of these paintings are most often led by deep browns, reds, and blacks, punctuated with elegant bursts of bright yellows, oranges, and crimsons, appearing almost as if the artist has lit his gritty darkened canvases from within.

Driven by a combination of influences that New York Times critic Holland Cotter, in his review for the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery in 2003, described as “a little reminiscent of Rouault’s expressionism, but applied to a Social Realist art inflected with references to African culture,” these works recall the composition of African masks and sculptures Smith studied throughout his career, as well as the work of the Mexican muralists and German expressionists.

 Smith was also guided by his friends and contemporaries Jacob Lawrence, Walter Williams, and Gregorio Prestopino.

While deeply engaged with the mainstream aesthetics of his time, Smith utilized a very personal visual language of stylistic forms that consistently prioritize the artist’s role as narrator. The expressive dark walls of apartment buildings serve as shorthand for the narrative distance between the known and the unknown, the communal and the private.

Smith often defined, in a bold and straightforward manner, the boundary between what the painting will and will not reveal to us, playing with the viewer’s perception of the story he put forth in a deliberately self-aware fashion.

As written by David C. Driskell, Smith often “symbolically intervene[d] to alert the viewer as if relating a gospel truth, constantly calling upon his audience to verify and compare their own experience with his.”

In this way Smith expressed the unbridled joy of the everyday energy of the New York City streets in his early works from the 1950s, such as his lauded Saturday Night in Harlem series. In the ‘60s, these scenes gave way to narrative social commentary, documenting the unrest and turmoil as well as the peaceful community organizing of the growing civil rights movement, as seen in works like For My People (1965) and Martin Luther King (1967).

His paintings continued upon this style in the ‘70s, becoming more active and aggressive with the introduction of sand and cloth to his repertoire of materials and collage to his technique.

Largely overlooked in the field of American painting of his era, Vincent Smith’s work reflects his desire to change the white-washed art historical narrative through documenting the dynamic nature of life in African American communities in New York. He continued this work throughout his long career, facilitating dialogue between African American artists of many disciplines, and helping to curate exhibitions of their work.

As Smith said of his career, “I remember that Bird [Charlie Parker] once said to me, ‘Vince, stick to your vision; don’t let nobody turn you around,’ what sustained me was the fact that I was doing something significant, that I was hopefully making a contribution to the African American community and the world.”

About the artist

Vincent Smith (b. 1929, Brooklyn, New York; d. 2003, New York, New York) was an artist, teacher, and informed student of art history. Vincent Smith paintings are found in numerous public collections including: Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum; Detroit Institute of Arts;  Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Newark Museum of Art; Rhode Island School of Design Museum; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Studio Museum of Harlem; Whitney Museum of American Art; Yale University Art Gallery, as well as many prestigious private collections.

Smith attended the Art Students League (1953), Brooklyn Museum Art School (1953/1956) and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1955).

To See in New York City

Ficre Ghebreyesus, I Believe We Are Lost, c. 2002. Acrylic on unstretched canvas, 113 ½ x 118 ½ in (288.3 x 301 cm).

Ficre Ghebreyesus paintings at Galerie Lelong & Co. NYC

Giorgio de Chirico, Uomo ferito che de cada de cavallo (Death of a Rider), 1937-1938, Oil on canvas, 20 1/8 x 24 3/8 inches (51.1 x 61.9 cm)

Giorgio de Chirico exhibition at Vito Schnabel Gallery NYC

Cornelius Annor, Onipa Akoma, 2023. Acrylic, fabric and fabric transfer on canvas. 83.5 x 118.5 inches

Cornelius Annor paintings at Venus Over Manhattan gallery

Che Lovelace, Figure with Falling Water, 2016-2022.

Che Lovelace paintings of Trinidad

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A CLASSIC Julian Onderdonk #texas #hillcountry #bl A CLASSIC Julian Onderdonk #texas #hillcountry #bluebonnets painting, “Near San Antonio” (1918) at @sama_art. I have long said my dream den has an Onderdonk #bluebonnet painting. A Texan, he nailed the “feel” as only someone passionate for and intimate with that landscape could.
Following the bluebonnet painting are others from Onderdonk including from his time in New York, which I knew nothing about.
#visitsanantonio
Claude Monet and Joan Mitchell face-to-face about Claude Monet and Joan Mitchell face-to-face about 15-feet apart at @mcnayart @visitsanantonio #visitsanantonio.
McNay is one of my favorite small museums in the US, wonderful Modern art collection with MAJOR figures like these and many, many others (Hopper, Rivera, van Gogh, Gauguin, Modigliani, etc).
#monet #claudemonet #joanmitchell #modernart #painting
Helen Frankenthaler’s ‘Eden Revisited’ (1967 Helen Frankenthaler’s ‘Eden Revisited’ (1967-1976) sure to brighten your day, it did mine on a recent visit to @sama_art @visitsanantonio. Stunning, vivid, massive (10-plus-feet tall), expressive… up close you can see the paint stains. 
I see so much drama in this painting, so much certainty, confidence. Of all the past artists I could have met, @helenfrankenthalerfoundation would be high on the list.
#helenfrankenthaler #colorfieldpainting #greatwomenartists #femaleartist #womenshistorymonth #yellow #orange #painting #modernart #visitsanantonio
3 showstoppers from @_wiggins_ at @briscoemuseum @ 3 showstoppers from @_wiggins_ at @briscoemuseum @visitsanantonio. Kim’s mark making and color are instantly recognizable and I DIG it! 
#visitsanantonio #westernart #westernartist #santafe #cowboy #purple
Harold Newton (left) and Alfred Hair side-by-side Harold Newton (left) and Alfred Hair side-by-side at @tampamuseumofart. To learn more about the original Florida Highwaymen artist, click the link in my bio.
#floridahighwaymen #haroldnewton #alfredhair #florida #floridalife #floridaartist #floridaart #floridaartists #blackartist #floridahistory
OVERWHELMED by this exhibition of #purvisyoung art OVERWHELMED by this exhibition of #purvisyoung artwork on view at @tampamuseumofart! 
What most caught my eye were all the 18-wheelers. Are these a reference to “urban renewal” and the siting of I-95 through the heart of Young’s #overtown #miami neighborhood. 
As occurred across America during 1950s-80s, so-called urban renewal was a tactic used by white politicians to destroy thriving Black communities by running interstates through them to aide white suburbanites in getting to jobs in town faster.
Young experienced Overtown on both sides of #urbanrenewal and I can’t help thinking all these trucks are commentary on I-95.
#miamilife #tampa #tampaflorida #artmuseum #blackart #blackartist #blackartmatters #selftaughtartist
I was writing about @ronjonofficial for my “My F I was writing about @ronjonofficial for my “My Favorite Florida” column on Rovology.com travel site this morning. My first visit was 86ish, my most recent visit came last month. 
#ronjonsurfshop #ronjon #cocoabeach #cocoabeachflorida #surfing #surflife #80s #80sfashion
“Florida Highwaymen: Dashboard Dreams” closes “Florida Highwaymen: Dashboard Dreams” closes at @aebackusmuseum 2/26. Best chance all year to see original Florida Highwaymen paintings. 
More info about Highwaymen check link in bio.
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