Ray Smith

Ray Smith was born in Brownsville, Texas, in 1959. He emerged in the 1980s and continues to produce exuberant paintings and sculptures characterised by an inimitable style and themes that reflect his bicultural heritage. Mutated and contorted figures recur throughout his work, forming a hybrid shaped by his early training in fresco painting with practitioners of the Mexican tradition, as well as by tributes to Picasso, the Surrealists, and the political activists of Mexican muralism. Through these varied beings, Smith reflects on the complexities of society, family, politics, culture, war, and the human condition itself, all framed by the cycles of birth and death.

Ray Smith has recently exhibited his work in galleries and museums including Nina Johnson (Miami), Lyle O. Reitzel (New York), Stux Gallery (New York), McClain Gallery (Houston), and Ruiz-Healy Art (San Antonio). His works are held in the collections of the Whitney Museum, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the San Antonio Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, among others.