Cottrell-Lovett Collection

Select Works by Ray Smith

Ray Smith emerged in the NY art scene in the 1980s. He was born in 1959 in Brownsville, TX and grew up in Central Mexico. His paintings and sculptures are a mix of Magical Realism, Surrealism, and Modernism. His style and subject matter reflect a bi-cultural American and Mexican heritage.

Ray Smith

Works:

Untitled, I
Untitled II
Untitled III
Untitled, IV
Untitled V
Untitled VI
Untitled VII
Untitled VIII
Mariana
Erotica, Neurotica
Biker

An excerpt from “Independent and International”

By Raphael Rubinstein

Other works in this collection give a sense of how widespread the revival of figurative painting was in the 1980s. Mexican-American painter Ray Smith, who began showing in the mid-1980s, combines allusions to European high-modernism with the vernacular Mexican imagery and the disjunctive visual syntax of David Salle and Julian Schnabel. His large four-panel oil and wax on wood painting Erotica, Neurotica (1989), uses motifs from Ferdinand Leger behind sparring animals.

See Also:

Events > Ray Smith Studio Visit