May Smith

Name
May Smith
Date of birth
1906
Place of birth
India
Date of death
1988
Place of death
Coromandel/Waikato (region)/New Zealand
Gender
Female
Biography
May Smith was a painter, engraver, and textile designer who introduced new ideas to the New Zealand art scene, influencing the development of modern art during the interwar period and beyond. Born in Simla, India, in 1906, Smith was the eldest of three children. Her father was Sir Joseph Smith, a civil engineer. Smith went to England in her early childhood to undergo a series of hip operations and began painting during her convalescence. She returned to New Zealand in 1921 with her mother and two brothers and settled in Auckland. Smith attended the Elam School of Art during the 1920s where she studied engraving before returning to England to attend the Royal College of Art in London. She graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1931 with a diploma in engraving.

In 1933, Smith visited Spain where she met New Zealand artist Frances Hodgkins in the town of Ibiza, and the two became friends. During the Depression, Smith found it difficult to obtain work as an engraver and her attempts to find work in book illustration or commercial art were also unsuccessful. Inspired by Hodgkins, Smith decided to focus on painting and started exhibiting her work in small galleries. With the outbreak of World War II, Smith returned to New Zealand in 1939.
At the 1940 Auckland Society of Arts Show, Smith exhibited some of the paintings that she had brought back with her from England. With their original sense of design and structure, and daring use of colour, Smith’s art aroused shock and admiration. In 1950, Smith and her husband moved to Gisborne, where they set up work as commercial fabric printers. In 1952 their marriage was dissolved and Smith returned to Auckland and began teaching at the Auckland Teachers Training College before teaching art full-time at the Epsom Girls' Grammar School and illustrating for the New Zealand School Journal. She continued to exhibit her hand-printed fabrics in group shows with Rex Fairburn and her work sold in several Auckland and Wellington shops, including the Helen Hitchings Gallery. Smith eventually became disillusioned with textile design, feeling that it was not possible to compete with mass-produced fabrics. Smith retired in 1965 and in 1967 moved permanently to the Coromandel where she continued to paint and exhibit regularly.