Jo Smail  Biography 

 

 

Baltimore-based,  South African artist Jo Smail (b. 1943, Durban) , is celebrated world-wide for her

abstract paintings, drawings, collages, and prints that are frequently composed through multiple states of material  accruals, subtractions, and modifications. 

 

Educated in South Africa at  Johannesburg College of Art, South Africa (1978 & 1975) and  the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa (1963), Smail moved to Baltimore in 1985 and taught at the  Maryland Institute College of Art from 1988-2017 - where she is now Professor Emeritus. Formal exploration as well as invention derive from the artist's personal history - delving into the past and the present with equal weight. Influenced by South African apartheid, a devastating Baltimore studio fire (1995), a life-altering stroke (2000), the socio-political content of personal effects, the natural world, and art history, Smail's artwork has been the subject of myriad exhibitions and major publications with reviews printed in  The New York Times, Art in America, The Hudson Review, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Post, among many others.

 

She has been the recipient of numerous accolades and residencies including the Trawick Sapphire Prize; Maryland State Arts Council Awards; Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellowship; Rochefort-en-Terre Residency in France; a  Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; and nomination for " Anonymous was a Woman." Smail is represented in private and public collections internationally including: Baltimore Museum of Art;  US Embassy, Johannesburg; Chase Manhattan Bank, Johannesburg & New York locations;  Durban Museum and Art Gallery; University of the Witwatersrand; Johannesburg Art Museum; Johns Hopkins University Collection; Mobil Corporation Art Collection; National Gallery of South Africa; Pretoria Art Museum; the Cleveland Clinic, among many others.

 

Formerly represented by  Goodman Gallery in South Africa, Smail is represented in the USA by  Goya Contemporary Gallery. Smail has- for many years-- collaborated with fellow South African artist  William Kentridge.  She is the subject of various books and catalogues and has lectured extensively about her practice.  In March of 2020, the artist opened her first major one-woman retrospective exhibition at the  Baltimore Museum of Art.