Born July 1921 in Adelaide, Frank Jeffrey Edson Smart AO, was the son of Francis Isaac Smart, a real estate agent and Emmeline Mildred and half-brother to his father’s daughter from his first marriage.
When he was four years old, Jeffrey first travelled to Europe, but after the great depression destroyed his father’s business, his life became more confined.
Drawing from a young age, his parents gave him large sheets of paper, posters and calendars to draw on and at age 12, taking Saturday drawing classes.
Educated at Unley High School and Pulteney Grammar School, Jeffrey initially wanted to become an architect, but his financial reality meant that he became a trainee teacher instead.
Jeffrey also took classes at the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts & Adelaide Teachers College. Fortunately for Jeffrey, Dorrit Black, a pioneer modernist, returned to Adelaide and introduced Jeffrey to modernism’s cubic forms and pure lines.
Image: Pulteney Grammar School, Adelaide – State Library of South Australia, B-2202
Career
Jeffrey began to teach art for the education department in 1942 and joined the Royal South Australian Society of Arts, first exhibiting there in 1941.
After he approached a Melbourne commercial gallery, Jeffrey held his first solo exhibition and accompanied a local Maritime artist John Giles to paint industrial landscapes at Port Adelaide.
Travelling to Europe for the first time as an adult in 1948, Jeffrey studied in Paris at the La Grand Chaumiere and later the Académie Montmartre under Fernand Léger.
Jeffrey also lived on the island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples in 1950, where he painted with Michael Shannon, Donald Friend and Jacqueline Hick.
In 1951, Jeffrey moved back to Adelaide. He then moved to Sydney after being awarded the Commonwealth Jubilee Art Prize, Sydney, being a place where there were more opportunities for him to exhibit his art.
While in Sydney, he became an art critic of the Daily Telegraph while supporting himself by working as a school teacher.
He also hosted the ABC Radio Children’s “The Argonauts” Program as “Phidias”, an art commenter.
Jeffrey exhibited during this period at the Macquarie Galleries.
As Jeffrey became more successful as an artist, he had the freedom to stop school teaching and pursue his art.
Return to Europe
Jeffrey travelled to Rome, Italy, in 1963, then Arezzo, staying in Italy for the rest of his life.
Being in Italy contributed to Jeffrey’s lighting of his palette, the bright contrasting geometry of sharp shapes and edges.
Although surrounded by old buildings, Jeffrey’s subjects in his artworks were of modernistic cubic shapes of shipping containers and the conjunction of old and new, of nature meeting geometry.
In 2001 was appointed officer of the Order of Australia for his services to visual art and his encouragement offered to young artists.
Jeffrey painted his final artwork in 2011, aged 90, titled “Labyrinth”, announcing his retirement on completing that artwork in 2011.
Jeffrey Smart died on June 20th, 2013, at age 91.
He created many artworks in his unique style throughout his life with his crisp lines and sparse depictions of large, industrialised scenes, almost a view of a vast industrialised perfection in a world of imperfection.
He claimed to add people to his artworks to add a sense of scale, as seen in his portrait of Clive James.
Further Reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Smart
https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/smart-jeffrey/
https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/artist/527/