Rooftop
Oil on linen canvas
24 x 18 1/8 inches
1961
As Exhibited in:
Elevation from Within: The Study of Art at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, 2019–2024, TJC Gallery, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 2019; Richardson Family Art Museum, Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 2021; Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, 2022, Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, Florida, 2023, Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland, 2024
In 1934, Hughie Lee-Smith won a Scholastic Magazine scholarship to study at the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts for one year. Returning home to Cleveland, Ohio, he continued his education at the Cleveland School of Art, graduating in 1938 with honors as well as funding for a fifth year of postgraduate study. During this period, Lee-Smith and other local artists established the Karamu House Artist Association, which aimed to direct “the Negro’s creative abilities into the mainstream of American life thus removing him from the isolation which has been so costly to initiative and ambition. Secondly, to enable the Negro to tell his own story to the community and the Nation, making directly known his sufferings, his dissatisfaction, his aspirations and his ambitions.” This collective mission echoed Lee-Smith’s lifelong calling as an individual practitioner.
After working on a series of lithographs under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration, Lee-Smith accepted a faculty position at Claflin College in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in 1939. His tenure there lasted only two years. Accustomed to urbane city life, Lee-Smith and his new bride were alarmed by the intense prejudice and limited opportunities in Orangeburg. The college’s shaky financial footing—including the occasional inability to pay professors’ salaries—along with his wife’s strong aversion to the regional weather and cuisine exacerbated the couple’s discontent. In 1941, the Lee-Smiths moved to Detroit, where he worked at the Ford Motor Company on Pratt-Whitney engines for the war effort before serving in the US Navy from 1943 to 1945.
Lee-Smith held several other short-term teaching posts over the years (including stints at Rex Goreleigh’s Studio-on-the-Canal in Princeton), all the while producing his increasingly celebrated paintings. In 1969, he became an artist-in-residence at Howard University; a year later, following the death of James Porter, Lee-Smith was appointed acting chair of the art department. His time at Howard—arguably the nation’s premier HBCU at that time—was exhilarating. Free to express his socio-political viewpoints and immersed in the Black Arts Movement, Lee-Smith recalled the two years spent on campus with pride.
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