David Smith

About

David Smith was born in Kings Lynn, Norfolk in 1943, and studied at both St Martin's School of Art and the Central School before taking a BA in History of Art at the Courtauld Institute, followed by an MA in History of Art at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Since the early seventies he has concentrated on caricature, appearing at different times - often at the same time - in The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Times, The Observer, The Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday, The Independent, The Daily and Sunday Telegraph, the Times Supplements, as well as magazines including Punch, The Listener, Radio Times, UK Press Gazette, Musical Times and The Strad.

In 1994 he relocated to New York where he lived for eight years, and was a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, The New York Daily News and The Philadelphia Inquirer, among others. He also lectured on American art to English students at the Metropolitan Museum. In 2002 Smith moved to Paris, where he concentrated on the European market, one result of which was a weekly profile in Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Since 2006 he has lived in London.

Smith uses black pen-and-ink, and employs a tight cross-hatching technique using a crow-quill nib. For colour work he generally uses the same technique with added wash. An admirer of Andre Gill, David Levine, and "Trog" (Wally Fawkes), Smith admitted in 1990 that although it was helpful to have met the subject of a caricature, "the process of exaggeration and disfigurement works far better in isolation armed with a battery of good photographs, a few drinks and a modicum of spleen." 

Examples of Smith's work are in The Ashmolean museum in Oxford.

• David Smith's website at www.dscaricatura.com
• David Smith "Character Study", UK Press Gazette, 26 February 1990, pp.21-25
• David Smith "Political Cartooning", UK Press Gazette, 25th anniversary issue, 1990.
• Mark Bryant Dictionary of Twentieth-Century British Cartoonists and Caricaturists (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2000), p.209.

Holdings

Description

94 accessioned originals

Date

80s; 90s