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Lionel Smit

24 Oct - 14 Nov 2015

Lionel Smit

Unlike previous exhibitions, “Sum of its parts” features fragments of figures and faces as though they are too big to fit on the canvas. The portraits are bursting out from the restraints of the canvas edges. They don’t want to fit “inside the box”.

Dates & Times

  • October24
  • Opening night
  • November14
  • Exhibition ends

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Lionel Smit

Recurrence

Following sold out shows at South Africa, London and Hong Kong.
Lionel Smit was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1982, he started developing and exhibiting straight after art school at Pro Arte Alphen Park. He now lives and works in Cape Town. He is best known for his contemporary portraiture executed through monumental canvasses and sculptures.

Smit exhibits locally in South Africa where he is considered one of the countries youngest investment artists. He is currently exhibiting and on art fairs in Amsterdam, Germany, India, Miami, Monaco, London and Hong Kong. Over the past 10 years he has established a substantial international following with collectors ranging from the Standard Chartered Bank to Laurence Graff Art Collection at Graff Delaire wine state.

Smit’s painting has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, where it received the Viewer’s Choice Award, as well as selected as the ‘face’ of the BP Portrait Award 2013 for all campaigns. He was recently honoured with a Ministerial Award from the Department of Culture for Visual Art and a highlight of his career has been the publication of one of his paintings on the cover of Christie’s Auction Catalogue.

 

 

Lionel Smit

Creating unordinary portraits of women, both representational and abstract, Lionel Smit sources his inspiration from the Cape Malay Community. Guided by influences of Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Andy Warhol, he combines gestural brushstrokes, splattered and dripping paint, with patches of colour applied across the heads of his subjects. Smit’s sculptures invoke similar feelings to that of their two-dimensional counterparts, yet, a further addition of depth in its actuality, he imbues his pieces with less foreboding and melancholy. The opaque softness of the paintings is replaced with highly detailed hatching, clay protrusions, and grooved surfaces. The layers of intense colouring are reproduced as physically perceivable textures in this medium.

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