Red Figure and Umbrella

Ian Smith

The Work

A bold, gestural figure rendered almost entirely in bright red — a rounded torso beneath the sweep of an umbrella, painted in loose, confident strokes that leave the white of the paper showing through as highlight. Faint pencil linework traces a more literal figure beneath the colour, giving the impression of a form caught mid-movement, half-abstracted into pure gesture and colour. Signed and dated lower right.

Year: 1996
Medium: Ink and coloured pencil on paper
Image size: 294 mm x 196 mm
Framed size: 370 mm x 475 mm
Catalogue: 0065

Provenance

This piece retains its original Heiser Gallery label on the reverse. I bought this piece as part of a small collection of six works on paper by Ian Smith, purchased in one hit from a private seller.

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Framing

Framed in a thin Tasmanian Blackwood moulding from my native timber range, with UltraVue glazing and 8-ply cotton rag matting — the same restrained treatment used across this group of works, letting the paper and mark-making carry the piece.

About Ian Smith

Ian Smith was born in Cairns, Queensland, in 1950. He began studying architecture at the University of Queensland in 1968 before leaving after a year, moving to Melbourne to complete a Diploma of Art & Design at Prahran College (1970–72). He returned to Brisbane in 1973 to teach painting and drawing at the Queensland College of Art, a role he held until 1979, when he left to paint full-time — a commitment he has sustained ever since. Smith is one of Queensland's most significant living figurative painters. His work has been curated into major exhibitions both in Australia and internationally, including at the Queensland Art Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art in Saitama, Japan, and Campo & Campo Gallery in Antwerp, Belgium, where he lived for seven years through the late 1980s and early '90s. In 1988, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Brisbane staged a major survey of his work. He is held in the collections of the Art Gallery of NSW, the National Gallery of Australia, and the National Gallery of Victoria, and continues to exhibit through Heiser Gallery and Woolloongabba Art Gallery in Brisbane.