Hughie Lee-Smith is remembered as one of America’s great modernist painters, a man who seamlessly blended surreal landscapes and classical technique with an unflinching eye for alienation and longing.

He became a major force to be reckoned with in mid-20th-century art, and his Detroit years gave him both his foundation and his vision.

At the age of 10, Lee-Smith moved with his mother to Detroit, part of the Great Migration that brought so many Black families north for work.

Detroit was an industrial, rapidly changing city at the time – one full of promise but also prejudice.

From his earliest years, it was obvious that Hughie Lee-Smith had strong artistic talent.

He began painting young, going on to study at the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts (now the College for Creative Studies) and then at Wayne State University in his later years.

Those institutions gave him his formal training, but Detroit itself – its streets, its contradictions – was the setting for his imagination.

Lee-Smith painted murals and community projects for the Works Progress Administration during the 1930s, later joining Detroit’s growing Black arts community.

His earliest work often carried strong social messages about the Depression, making the struggles of ordinary Detroiters palatable to all audiences.

From there, his Workers Progress Administration (WPA) years further sharpened his technical skills, making him think more deeply about the impact of art on public life.

Lee-Smith would go on to define himself with his early 1950s style, which was punctuated by isolated figures across vast, surreal landscapes, cities without crowds, and the liminal space that exists between realism and dreams.

His paintings frequently showed alienated figures on rooftops, near water, or adrift in open skies.

Some took his work to represent the loneliness of modern life, while others digested it as commentary on the isolation of being Black in America.

Either way, the mood was obvious: Raw, haunting, and unforgettable.

In 1953, Lee-Smith won a top prize at the Detroit Institute of Arts for his painting “Rooftop,” an honor that would go on to launch him into the national spotlight.

However, as successful as he was, Detroit’s racial climate at the time sadly limited his success, which ultimately led to him relocating to New York in the late 1960s.

The following year, Lee-Smith became a member of the National Academy of Design – one of the first African Americans to do so – which saw his work being featured in major institutes like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney, and the Smithsonian.

He also taught at Howard University, inspiring an entirely new generation of painters, writers, and musicians who saw in his canvases a kind of visual blues – sparse, aching, and above all else – deeply human.

Hughie Lee-Smith’s work is often said to leave viewers with a sense of solitude: Lone figures, blank skylines – suggestions of stories not yet told.

For decades, he has showcased the quiet backdrop of modern life as it is experienced by a Black man from Detroit.

He is a native son of the Motor City whose work brings to light its contradictions: Beauty and bleakness, power and vulnerability, presence and absence.

For that, his artistic legacy will live on for decades to come.

Victoria Jackson (Editor In Chief)

Victoria Jackson is a lifelong student and sharp-eyed documentarian of all things Detroit, from its rich musical roots and cultural icons to its shifting neighborhoods, storied architecture, and underground legends. With her finger firmly on the pulse of both the city’s vibrant past and its rapidly unfolding future, she brings a deeply personal, historically grounded lens to every piece she writes.

Published on: August 23, 2025