March 27, 2019

Hughie Lee-Smith, Fugue. 1995. Lithograph.

In music theory, a fugue is a compositional technique where an individual melody is taken up by other parts of the music, creating a theme. In psychology, a fugue is a disorder that brings on memory loss. Hughie Lee-Smith’s Fugue embodies both of these ideas through the collection of memories and musicality. He utilizes bright, contrasting colors to bring together three different scenes in time. These moments are set up like stages, placing the figures frozen in their performances. This isolation of figures and moments, in fact, was characteristic of many of Lee-Smith’s pieces. It bestows a surreal quality and a sense of vastness, making all four of the figures in Fugue feel alone and miniscule. The enigmatic quality of his work dances on the line between the real and the surreal, creating whimsical scenes for his viewers.

Lee-Smith was born in 1915 in Eustis, Florida. He spent most of his early childhood in Atlanta, where he began to draw much of his inspiration for his work. He then attended East Technical High School in Cleveland and was president of the school’s art club. He received a scholarship to attend the Cleveland School of Arts, later graduating with honors in Painting. He joined the navy after the completion of his degree and went to Wayne State University after for a bachelor's degree in Art Education.

In 1967, Lee-Smith became the second African American to have a full membership in the National Academy of Design. In 1988, he had his first retrospective when the New Jersey State Museum organized its traveling exhibition. His work is exhibited in permanent collections in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, Howard University, the San Diego Museum of Art, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

This piece was gifted to the Wayne State University Art Collection by Karen Bowers.

Written by Marissa N. Gannascoli

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