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ARTIST'S BIO
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| Oliver Smith (1918-1994) was born in Waupun, Wisconsin, to a high school principal and his arts-loving wife, who encouraged Smith's early interest in architecture, literature, and the performing arts. After his parents divorced and his mother remarried, Smith moved east, where his stepfather owned a store in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. A quintessentially American artist, Smith began painting as an undergraduate architecture student at State College in Pennsylvania, and planned to study playwrighting at Yale. |
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| However, he decided to stop over in New York City for a year on his way to graduate school in Connecticut, arriving in the fall of 1939. His cousin, composer and writer Paul Bowles, suggested that Smith could find cheap lodgings in Brooklyn Heights, thus introducing him to the borough he adopted as home for the rest of his life. In the Heights, Smith moved into a brownstone rooming house at 7 Middagh Street owned by George Davis (an editor at Harper's Bazaar). This house, now demolished, is famed in the annals of literature, as it was tenanted by Paul and Jane Bowles, W. H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, Carson McCullers, Richard Wright, John LaTouche, and Gypsy Rose Lee. Auden presided over the communal dinners and collected the rent; Wright landscaped the rooming house's abandoned rear garden and charged admission to the other residents to cover his expenses. It was at 7 Middagh Street that Smith began forging the show-business contacts that were to stand him in good stead for a lifetime. During his year in New York City, Smith supported himself by working at department stores, as well as ushering at the Roxy, and clerking at the Brooklyn Public Library. He kept on painting, and had an exhibit at Manhattan's Bonestelle Gallery, featuring his atmospheric depictions of the New York waterfront and Manhattan as seen from Brooklyn Heights. When little sold, Smith sought advice from Bowles. How could he make a living as an artist? Should he move on to Yale? His cousin advised the despondent Smith, "You paint, and you like the theatre. So paint for the theatre." The idea appealed, and Smith launched an intense effort to create a theatrical portfolio and break into the scenic design business. It was a field uniquely suited to his talents, for his sensitivity to the sculpting of space made for scenic designs that were not only esthetically beautiful, but tailored to the practical needs of individual productions. In 1941, Smith's work for Massine's ballet Saratoga was hailed by a New York critic as a breakthrough in American scenic design. Agnes De Mille's Rodeo followed in 1942, and On The Town and Fancy Free (with Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein) in 1944. Smith's scenery won raves for each, and he was in demand for both Broadway and ballet assignments. He inked his first movie deal, for Oklahoma!, in 1953 - the same year he purchased a federal yellow brick mansion on Willow Street in Brooklyn Heights. This house (which Truman Capote, a tenant of Smith's, described enviously in his short story, A House on the Heights) remained Smith's residence for the rest of his life. Throughout his career, Oliver Smith's work blended a distinctly American painting style with the grace of his moving scenery, creating designs that earned accolades around the world. |
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