Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert is delighted to announce Richard Smith: Shaped Canvases 1966-1972 - the first solo exhibition in over 50 years dedicated to this important body of work by the artist.
In 1963 Kasmin Gallery held the first in a series of remarkable exhibitions showcasing monumental shaped canvases by the young British artist, Richard Smith (1931-2016). A recent graduate of the Royal College of Art, Smith had only just returned to London after two years working in New York on the esteemed Harkness Fellowship. He had by this stage already gained significant critical acclaim for his largescale abstract paintings exhibited at the cutting-edge Green Gallery in New York. But it was these dramatic shaped canvases - made upon his return home - which truly confirmed his originality as an artist. It marked the start of a revelatory period lasting a decade in which he explored the limits of painting through the shaped canvas.
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Introducing Richard Smith
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‘The making of paintings has always been a subject in my work and with the shaping of the canvas this subject became more obvious and in some ways primary… The shape is an aspect of colour, the distortion of the canvas membrane alters the way the colour can be seen – also, the contour makes a varied absorbency, and therefore the canvas holds the colour in a specific way…’
Richard Smith 1968
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List of works
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Works on Paper
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Biographical photos
