Self-taught American draughtsman, born in 1907 in Ohio (United States), died in 1998.
Life
Lewis Smith began drawing in 1920. His father, Howard E. Smith, worked for a railroad company, which gave him a pass to travel free by train: he criss-crossed Ohio and the rest of the country, recording what he saw in notebooks and drawings. Four small diaries, kept from 1904 to 1941 (the oldest by his father, the other three by him), are held in the archives of the American Folk Art Museum in New York.
He lived and drew in solitude, to the point of painting his figures even on the walls of his house, barn and outbuildings, in rural Ohio. He did not show his work in his lifetime; New York’s American Primitive Gallery made it known after his death, at the end of the 1990s.
The work
Smith drew in graphite and coloured pencils on salvaged supports: grocery bags, flattened cardboard, biscuit boxes, often on both sides and sometimes incorporating the printed brand names. He depicted locomotives and railway details, alleys, counters and diners, and above all tall, muscular women, as boxers or wrestlers, inspired by the sporting contests he attended on his travels. Passionate about current affairs, he also collected newspapers, objects, documents and photographs relating to the American railroad.
Exhibitions and collections
- Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne (notably School to school and Free 4 all, room 123); 3rd Art Brut Biennial, Corps, 17 November 2017 to 29 April 2018.
- American Folk Art Museum, New York (archive: Lewis Smith’s diaries).