Richard Smith: Uptown | Downtown 1959-63

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Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert presents a long-overdue show of rare early works by the artist, the first such survey to take place in the UK. The exhibition features 18 paintings, including loans from the Arts Council of England Collection, Southampton City Art Gallery and private collectors including Peter and Chrissy Blake. Curated by scholar Marco Livingstone, who has written the introduction to the catalogue, this exhibition focuses on the groundbreaking paintings produced by Smith during his first two years in New York and immediately on his return to London. Livingstone notes that this work, much of it large in scale and painted in joyous, saturated colours, reflected the abundance and optimism of American society that the artist found so striking. As Livingstone writes:

‘The stroke of genius in these early works by Smith lay in his understanding that this language of painting, however attractive in itself, could be given even greater depth through connections with the visual stimuli that he found in the modern urban environment.’