Howard Smith

$60.00

Blending art and design in a multitude of mediums and integrating references to Black cultural history with the modern tradition of abstraction, Howard Smith is a crucial addition to the story of Western art.

— Adam Lerner / Director, Palm Springs Art Museum


This volume is the first significant monograph dedicated to the multifaceted practice of Howard Smith, a Black artist, designer, and collector born in the United States who spent most of his creative life in Finland, where he is more well known.

Smith worked across media—cut paper, screenprints, wood, metal, textiles, ceramics, and found objects—always balancing his life as an artist with his work in the commercial realm, which included designing interiors, murals, curtains, and tableware. Drawing on numerous influences and pictorial languages, including Finnish informalism, mid-century modernism, the Black Power movement in the US, and African masks, Smith developed a polyglot vocabulary and aesthetic sensibility that permeated all of his work regardless of the context, transcending boundaries between media, between the art and design worlds, and between the two countries he called home.

Howard Smith is a bilingual publication with essays by both American and Finnish scholars appearing in both English and Finnish. The book contains conversations with Ken Erwin (a close friend of Smith) and Erna Aaltonen, Smith’s widow, providing a more intimate glimpse into the life of this artist-designer, who, until recently, has gone largely unrecognized in the US.

Blending art and design in a multitude of mediums and integrating references to Black cultural history with the modern tradition of abstraction, Howard Smith is a crucial addition to the story of Western art.

— Adam Lerner / Director, Palm Springs Art Museum


This volume is the first significant monograph dedicated to the multifaceted practice of Howard Smith, a Black artist, designer, and collector born in the United States who spent most of his creative life in Finland, where he is more well known.

Smith worked across media—cut paper, screenprints, wood, metal, textiles, ceramics, and found objects—always balancing his life as an artist with his work in the commercial realm, which included designing interiors, murals, curtains, and tableware. Drawing on numerous influences and pictorial languages, including Finnish informalism, mid-century modernism, the Black Power movement in the US, and African masks, Smith developed a polyglot vocabulary and aesthetic sensibility that permeated all of his work regardless of the context, transcending boundaries between media, between the art and design worlds, and between the two countries he called home.

Howard Smith is a bilingual publication with essays by both American and Finnish scholars appearing in both English and Finnish. The book contains conversations with Ken Erwin (a close friend of Smith) and Erna Aaltonen, Smith’s widow, providing a more intimate glimpse into the life of this artist-designer, who, until recently, has gone largely unrecognized in the US.

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  • Artwork by Howard Smith
    Texts by Allison Blakely, Erna Aaltonen, Ervin Latimer,
    Ken Erwin, Steven Wolf, and Tuomas Laulainen

    Hardcover
    9.5 x 12.5 inches
    260 pages / 135 images
    ISBN: 9798890180995

    Co-published with the Palm Springs Art Museum

  • Howard Smith (1928-2021) was an African American artist, designer, and collector. Throughout his career, he lived in Finland, with the exception of 1976-1984 while teaching at Scripps College in California. In his early adulthood, Smith served with U.S. occupying forces in post-war Japan, Korea, and Germany. After his service, he briefly studied at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts. Smith came to Finland in 1962 when he co-organized an international youth exhibition of American artists.

    Attracted to the signature “less is more” Finnish design aesthetic, he soon won the respect of a wide circle of Finnish artists, architects, and designers. He worked with paper, pigments, wood, clay, textiles and metal, designing for corporate offices, public buildings, and cruise ships. Smith especially enjoyed incorporating into his practice recycled items like scrap metal, used cardboard, and castoff clothing. His artwork displays an exuberance and generosity characteristic of the man. It is immediately recognizable for bold gestures in line, plane and mass, its rich colors and its contrapuntal contrasts in material and form. The work of Howard Smith can be found in several museum collections in Finland and in USA , including Finland’s National Gallery Ateneum Art, EMMA Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Museum of African-American Art Los Angeles, and Museum of Modern Art New York.

    The great paradox of Smith’s final years was that—after opening the eyes of so many through his work and varied collections—he was blinded by glaucoma. Undaunted, he continued to work by sense of touch. The artist died at his home in Fiskars, Finland in 2021 at the age of 92.