Howard Smith Print

Rich colour palette in this “Untitled” lithograph from Howard Smith's paper-cut works. Smith’s method of drawing with scissors creates elegant profiles and sculptural shapes. 49x35”. In original frame, in good condition with age appropriate wear. Plate signed. Finland, 1980s.

The Palm Springs Art Museum is showcasing the work of Howard Smith for the first time in the United States since the 1980s. The exhibition will be on view until February 23,  2026.

Howard Smith (1928-2021) was an artist from New Jersey whose textiles and ceramics were produced by some of Scandinavia’s biggest design firms during the heyday of post-war modernism. One of the few Black artists of his generation to successfully collaborate with industry, he brought exuberant color to curtain design and decorated his ceramics with a unique pictorial language that fused abstract forms with African symbols.

Smith had over 40 solo exhibitions during his life. Yet, because he emigrated to Finland in 1962, he is unknown to all but a small group of design connoisseurs in the United States. His unique body of work is the product of an artist contending with the grand historical forces of his time: racism, modernism, cold-war ideology, and the African diaspora. This will be the first retrospective of Smith in his home country. — Palm Springs Museum

Also of note; in 1976 Hampton University published Black Art: an International Quarterly*, Vol. 1 No. 2, a 68–page volume dedicated to the careers and art of Howard Smith, Art Smith and Yinka Adeyemi with a foreword by Gordon Parks and an introduction by James Baldwin.

*predecessor to The International Review of African American Art