?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 40,000 - $ 60,000
HUGHIE LEE-SMITH (1915 - 1999) Untitled (Young Man in a Slum).
Oil on linen canvas, circa 1960. 660x914 mm; 26x36 inches. Signed in oil, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Arizona.
This striking and large canvas is a wonderful example of Hughie Lee-Smith's mid-career painting. It appears very closely related to his Slum Lad, circa 1960, in the collection of the Flint Institute of Arts. This painting depicts the same young man a in long-sleeved white shirt, and the same background of crumbling urban decay. Here the figure has turned and is walking away from the viewer - while in Slum Lad he is facing the viewer. It epitomizes Lee-Smith's vision of a modern, existential landscape inhabited by dis-illusioned young figures. Lee-Smith returned often to show his work and teach in Detroit after moving to New York in 1958. Lee-Smith was represented in New York by the Petite Gallery and then Janet Nessler Gallery through the 1960s. King-Hammond p. 57.
