- Created by
- Lee-Smith, Hughie, American, 1915 - 1999
- Subject of
- Unidentified Man or Men
- Date
- 1959 - 1960
- Medium
- oil paint or oil-modified alkyd on canvas
- Dimensions
- H x W x D (framed): 31 1/8 × 39 7/8 × 2 in. (79.1 × 101.3 × 5.1 cm)
- H x W x D (unframed): 26 × 34 1/8 × 13/16 in. (66 × 86.6 × 2 cm)
- Caption
- American surrealist painter Hughie Lee-Smith always thought of himself as an artist, an American artist. It was important for him to make this distinction, as many members of the white art establishment generally did not, choosing instead to confine the work of African Americans to the segregated category “black art.”
- For Lee-Smith, paintings such as Untitled symbolized his experiences as a person living in a racist society. “I think perhaps in expressing . . . a kind of loneliness of spirit, I’m expressing a thing that’s based in the life experience of most Negroes in this country—a sense of rejection, a sense of being out there all by yourself.”
- Description
- This painting depicts an anonymous African American man walking away from the viewer. Wearing a pink shirt and grey pants, he walks with head bowed, yet his shoulders straight. The landscape around him is barren and rocky, with a single upright pole standing in the foreground. There is a dead log on the ground to the right. Directly ahead of the man is a field of stones, beyond which is a bleak landscape of rocky bluffs under a grey sky. There are three trees in the distance.
- Place made
- New York City, New York County, New York, United States, North and Central America
- Classification
- Visual Arts
- Type
- oil paintings
- Topic
- Art
- Men
- Race discrimination
- Segregation
- Credit Line
- Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
- Object number
- 2012.45ab
- Restrictions & Rights
- © 1959 by Hughie Lee-Smith/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS)
- Permission required for use. Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.