Robert E Smith, artist: Robert E Smith, Artist

Self Portrait

Short Bio

Robert E. Smith is a nationally known folk and "outsider" artist. His paintings have been featured at New York City's prestigious Museum of American Folk Art and sold at distinguished galleries coast-to-coast. He has also been featured in The Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century American Folk Art. His unique visions, brimming with color, humor and incident, represent a triumph of the imagination over a strenuous and difficult life. Bibliography and great photos on Detour Art.

Robert Eugene Smith
October 14, 1927- February 13, 2010
Robert Eugene Smith was born in St. Louis, Mo
to Mary Agnes (Walls, Smith,) Dowler and Clarence Smith
Robert lived a rich life and had many friends in Springfield, MO where he passed.

About the Blog

This page is dedicated to the artist, Robert E Smith.

If you know Robert and would like to add to this site

please e-mail me stories, photos, links to video and

anything else that will help to tell his story. - Grace Matthews

I'm Robert's cousin in San Diego, Ca. (858) 576-0476

GraceMatthews1@aol.com

Robert E Smith photo: Grace Matthews

Read About Robert Eugene Smith

Order on Amazon

Paintings, Drawings, Poems, and Stories

Selected and Edited by Eric Pervukhin and Carla Stine

But Smith’s art reveals more than an imagination unfettered. The work of an inveterate story-teller, his paintings present witty, savvy, complex visual narratives. Cartoon animals mingle with sidewalk preachers, movie stars, and U.S. Presidents; in busy street scenes, bicycles and trolley cars bustle below while blimps and airplanes and UFOs—and an occasional nuclear bomb—fly overhead. Smith’s painting revels in satire, revealing an eye for incongruity and an inherent love of life. Even a cursory view of his work reflects a man who led a rich, wondrous life and whose fanciful yearnings inspired the community that cherished him.

Born in St. Louis, Smith moved to Springfield in 1975. Drawn mainly from local, privately-owned collections, the present anthology features thirty full-color illustrations along with cartoons, poems, and stories by the artist.

Eric Pervukhin is Professor of Art and Design at Missouri State University. His paintings, drawings, and book illustrations have earned international acclaim.

7 x 7, 80 pages, 50 illustrations

(30 in color)

ISBN 978-0-913785-02-7

$32.95 paper

Distributed for Moon City Press.

“Folk art can help you to lead a halfway decent life,” Robert E. Smith (1927-2010) was heard to say; but Springfield, Missouri’s most famous, eccentric, and beloved painter pushed his work into the realm of outsider art. Self-taught, Smith began painting while a young man: forcibly institutionalized following a nervous breakdown, he retreated into his art. Unsurprisingly, his art brut is unbounded by logic, time, and space, brilliantly colored, at once childlike and troubling.

Carla Stine is a designer, collage artist, and illustrator. She is an admirer of Robert’s work and life and honored to have been his friend. June 2011