RAY SMITH

From Lux Art Institute: 

Painter and sculptor Ray Smith was born in Brownsville, Texas in 1959, on lands that his family had settled in the early 19th century. He studied fresco painting with traditional craftsmen in Mexico, attended art academies in Mexico and the United States, and settled in Mexico City. Since 1985, he has divided his time between New York and Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Smith’s work is characterized by a unique kind of magical realism. He bends, twists, and transplants, creating illogical scenarios that are full of surprises and special effects. The artist often uses dogs and animals as anthropomorphic beings. “They are an entity of the human figure,” says Smith. “They are beasts, but they are directly attached to a blueprint of our own existence.”

Smith’s work has been widely exhibited in the United States and Mexico, as well as in Japan, Europe, and South America. He exhibited in the 1989 Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; the First Triennial of Drawings at the Joan Miro Foundation in Barcelona, Spain; and “Latin American Artists of the 20th Century,” an exhibition that traveled from Seville, Spain to the Musee National d’Art Moderne at the Pompidou Center in Paris, France; the Kunsthalle, Cologne, Germany; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York City. During the last two decades, Smith has had 50 one-man exhibitions. Smith’s paintings are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art; Brooklyn Museum of Art; and Metropolitan Museum of Art, all in New York City; High Museum of Contemporary Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Houston Museum of Contemporary Art, Texas; Miami Art Museum, Florida; Wurth Museum, Kunzelman, Germany; Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City; and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain.