Frank (Jeffrey) Edison Smart AO

Frank (Jeffrey) Edison Smart

AO

ATTENDED PULTENEY GRAMMAR SCHOOL 1934 - 1936

Jeffrey Smart was born on 26 July 1921 and attended Pulteney on a Cathedral Choir Scholarship. He attempted the Intermediate certificate at Pulteney in 1936 but was unsuccessful.

Jeffrey originally wanted to be an architect but studied at Adelaide Teachers’ College and SA School of Arts and Crafts from 1937-41. He was a teacher in the early 1940s and held his first solo exhibition in 1944. The Art Gallery of South Australia bought his Water towers in 1944, when he was 23 years old. In 1948 he travelled to Europe, studying at La Grande Chaunière, Paris and later at the Académie Montmartre under Fernand Lèger. He returned to Australia in 1951, and exhibited frequently from 1957. On his return he lived in Sydney where he worked as an art critic for The Daily Telegraph (1952-54), and at the ABC where he compered the children’s radio programme The Argonauts. He also worked as a drawing teacher at the National Art School (1956-62).

In 1965 he returned to Italy where he lived for the rest of his life. He was one of Australia’s best known artists, best known for unsentimental paintings of lonely urban vistas, lonely individuals in industrial wastelands and the iconic use of concrete structures, freeways, and street signs. His later works are generally regarded as surreal or hyper-realist and comment on urban alienation. His use of the ‘golden mean’ and eye for geometry, along with his use of bold colour stand out in his work.

In 2012 Jeff’s final exhibition Master of Stillness was held at the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, and Carrick Hill, in Adelaide. It comprised works drawn from across his oeuvre, and traced the development of his art from its beginnings in Adelaide to ‘his ultimate, mature achievement as a poet of a new vernacular of modern painting.’ In the forward to the book associated with the exhibition, Smart stated:

“It would be fair to say that the unique shape and light of these South Australian landscapes, together with my fascination for city motifs, formed the alpha and omega of the way I would continue to see the world through my painting”.

His last work Labyrinth was completed in 2011 and he announced his retirement.

Jeffrey Smart died in Arezzo on 20 June 2013 aged 91. LEGENDS PULTENEY