<I>Untitled</I>
date: label: Date
content: 1959 - 1960
name: label: Created by
content: Hughie Lee-Smith, American, 1915 - 1999
label: Subject of
content: Unidentified Man or Men
notes: label: Caption
content: 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.”
label: Caption
content: 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.”
label: Description
content: 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: label: Place made
content: New York City, New York County, New York, United States, North and Central America
topic: label: Topic
content: African American
label: Topic
content: Art
label: Topic
content: Men
label: Topic
content: Race discrimination
label: Topic
content: Segregation
setName: label: See more items in
content: National Museum of African American History and Culture Collection
label: Classification
content: Visual Arts
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of African American History and Culture
identifier: label: Object number
content: 2012.45ab
objectType: label: Type
content: oil paintings
objectRights: label: Restrictions & Rights
content: © 1959 by Hughie Lee-Smith/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS)
label: Restrictions & Rights
content: Permission required for use. Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.
physicalDescription: label: Medium
content: oil paint or oil-modified alkyd on canvas
label: Dimensions
content: H x W x D (framed): 31 1/8 × 39 7/8 × 2 in. (79.1 × 101.3 × 5.1 cm)
label: Dimensions
content: H x W x D (unframed): 26 × 34 1/8 × 13/16 in. (66 × 86.6 × 2 cm)