Richard Smith, British painter, Died at 84

Richard Smith was born on October 27, 1931, in Letchworth, Hertfordshire and died on April 16, 2016.

He was an English printmaker and painter.

Smith has produced work in a range of styles but is often associated with color field painting.

Following completion of the national service with the Royal Air Force in Hong Kong, he studied at St Albans School of Art and later undertook post-graduate studies at the Royal College of Art in London from 1954 to 1957.

In 1957, he was a lecturer at Hammersmith College of Art until the year 1958.

In 1961, Smith was awarded a Harkness Fellowship in 1959 and travelled to America and spent several years there painting and teaching, with his first one-man show at the Green Gallery, New York.

During the year 1970, Richard was the British representative at the Venice Biennale and in 1975, a retrospective exhibition of his work was exhibited at the Tate Gallery in London.

Some of his early work drew on packaging and advertising, which led to his being associated by some critics to the Pop Art movement.

He, at one point, stated that his work was “often physically related to hoardings or cinema screens which never present objects actual size; you could drown in a glass of beer, live in a semi-detached cigarette packet.

During 1972, Smith exhibited the first of what are called the “kite paintings”, in which rather than using a conventional stretcher the canvas is tensioned by cords and structures of aluminium tubing, which become an element in the composition of the works.

Richard resettled permanently in New York in 1976.

Richard Smith passed away at 84 yrs old.