Richard Templeton Smith was born in Edinburgh, Scotland but was raised and educated in South Africa since he was 11. Smith studied graphic design at the Johannesburg School of Art and by the late 1960s he was producing important political cartoons for the Sunday Times and underground movement in Johannesburg. He held his first solo exhibition in London in 1972 at the Arts Theatre Club and he was Standard Bank’s cartoonist of the year in 1980 and 1984. In 1990 he was an artist in resident at the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris and to date has participated in over 70 solo and group exhibitions, both local and international.

Smith has consistently explored the human form in his paintings and drawings. Despite a successful detour into landscape painting in the 1980’s and 1990’s, he is best known for his accomplished figurative works of the past two decades. Rendered in his signature vibrant palette, his paintings employ stage-like settings, autonomous painterly marks, and pictures within pictures – while arriving at fresh and striking pictorial outcomes. Smith has consistently been an authentic voice where the act of painting is foremost and form and content are secondary.

“I start off painting abstract, but the paint always tells me there’s a figure there. These paintings have nothing to do with me. They are not autobiographical. I don’t know where they come from. At first, they are strangers to me, but over time in my studio, as I develop each composition, layering the paint, perhaps adding charcoal lines to a figure, they become familiar and intimate.” Richard Smith

"They’re weird and monstrous and they’re oddly compelling. Sometimes they’re constructed in a multi-faceted layout. At other times, they present themselves to you in surreal poses… there’s humour there… it’s humour pummeled by bleakness revealing echoes of what it was that gave Smith the potency he enjoyed as a political cartoonist” Robyn Sassen

Smith relocated to Ireland in 2019 having lived in South Africa for over 60 years. He currently lives and works in a small village near the coastal city of Gandia in Spain.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2025
'Incognito', EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2023
'No Signal, No Message, No Secret', EBONY/CURATED, Franschhoek, South Africa

2017
'Ghost in the Machine', EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2016
'Faceless', EBONY/CURATED, Franschhoek, South Africa

2015
'New Paintings', EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2014
'Rapid Eye Movement', EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2012
Retrospective Exhibition, University of Cape Town, Irma Stern Museum, Cape Town, South Africa
Retrospective Exhibition, Artspace, Johannesburg, South Africa

2010
'The Invisible Man', Artspace, Johannesburg, South Africa

2009
'Portal', iArt Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2007
'Cascades', Artspace, Johannesburg, South Africa
Potchefstroom University Gallery, Potchefstroom, South Africa

2006
Cultivaria Arts Festival, Paarl, South Africa

2005
‘Dialogues’, Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, South Africa

2003
Jill Yakas Gallery, Athens, Greece

1993 – 1994
Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

1991
South African Association of Arts, Pretoria, South Africa

1988
Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

1972
Solo Show of Cartoons, Arts Theatre Club, Leicester, United Kingdom

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2025
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2024
'Modern Masters VI' EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa
EXPO Chicago, EBONY/CURATED, Chicago, South Africa

2023
'A Very Loop Street Summer II', EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa
'An Endless Night', curated by Anelisa Mangcu, The Mount Nelson, A Belmond Hotel, Cape Town, South Africa
'Room With a View', Curated by Karen Elkington, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2021
1-54 London, EBONY/CURATED, London, United Kingdom

2019
‘A Smaller Scale’, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2017
‘From the Horses Mouth’, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa
London Art Fair, Ed Cross Fine Art, London, United Kingdom

2016
‘Projects’, EBONY/CURATED, Franschhoek, South Africa
SAADA Art Fair, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2015
SAADA Art Fair, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2014
'Marking the Map', Lizamore and Associates, Johannesburg, South Africa
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa
Carol Lee Fine Art, Johannesburg, South Africa

2012
FNB Art Joburg, Lizamore and Associates, Johannesburg, South Africa

2011
'Salon des Confusés', Rose Korber Art Salon, Camps Bay, Cape Town, South Africa

2010
Miele Art Gallery Johannesburg, South Africa
'WHO?',Grand Provence Franschhoek, South Africa

2009
Grand Provence, Franschhoek, South Africa
Rose Korber Art Salon, Camps Bay, Cape Town, South Africa
Work chosen for the South African Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria

2008
'MUSE ’08', KKNK, Oudshoorn, South Africa
iArt Cape Town, South Africa
Rose Korber Art Salon, Camps Bay, Cape Town, South Africa

2007
Rose Korber Art Salon, Camps Bay, Cape Town, South Africa
Bell Roberts, Lourensford, Somerset West, South Africa
Cultivaria, Paarl, South Africa
KKNK, Oudtshoorn, South Africa

2006
Rose Korber Art Salon, Camps Bay, Cape Town, South Africa
‘Portraits’, AVA Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2005
Rose Korber Art Salon, Camps Bay, Cape Town, South Africa

2002
Omma Centre of Contemporary Art, Chania, Crete

2001
Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

1995 -2000
Represented by Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa and Galleri Viktoria, Gothenburg, Sweden

1990-1991
Resident at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France
Luxtor’s Fine Art, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
Black Boy Gallery, West Wycombe, United Kingdom

1990
Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

1986
Everard Read Gallery with Paul Stopforth and Hillary Graham, Johannesburg, South Africa

1976
South African Association of Arts, Johannesburg, South Africa

1970
‘Mice that Roar’, Fine Arts Department at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, United States of America

COLLECTIONS

Rand Merchant Bank, South Africa
Sasol, South Africa
Sanlam, South Africa
FNB, South Africa
University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
University of the Free State, South Africa
University of Cape Town, South Africa

PUBLICATIONS

2017
‘Richard Smith’, Published by EBONY/CURATED

2012
‘Richard Smith’. Published to coincide with Irma Stern Museum Retrospective

2009
‘What’s so Funny?’ Under the skin of South African Cartooning by Andy Mason

1999
Nelson Mandela, A life in Cartoons

1988
Rhodes Journalism Review

1988
Dictionary of South African Painters and Sculptors – Everard Read

1982 – 1989
Chief Illustrator – Leadership Magazine, Johannesburg, South Africa
Standard Bank Cartoonist of the Year Award, (’80 and ’89)
Represented on Cape Town Triennial (’85 and ‘88).

1987
Cartoons and Illustrations for the Harvard Business Review

1977 – 1984
Cartoonist for the Sunday Express, Johannesburg, South Africa
Illustrator for: Optima, Management, Financial Mail, Leadership and Energos

1968 – 1969
Cartoonist – Sunday Times, Johannesburg, South Africa

1973 – 1976
Daily political cartoon strip – Rand Daily Mail, Johannesburg, South Africa
Published book of Cartoons ‘Smith and Abbott’s Greatest Hits’

1972
The Cartoon (A short history of Graphic Comedy and Satire) by John Geipel

1970 – 1972
London, UK Freelance Cartoonist for: Punch, BBC, Time Out and Ink, United Kingdom