Jack Smith: The Written and the Diagrammatic, Paintings and Drawings 1965–77

The paintings in this exhibition dated from the previous 12 years and were what Jack Smith called “diagrams of experience or sensation.”

Sheffield-born Smith (1928-2011) was a painter known both for his early neo-realist works and his later abstractions.

In the paintings and the two dozen drawings featured in the Serpentine show, Smith was seeking beauty in the juxtaposition of elements within a work, and to create pieces which “stood outside the hysteria of one’s own time.”