Jeffrey Smart

Who was Jeffrey Smart?

Frank Jeffrey Edson Smart, AO was an expatriate Australian painter known for his precisionist depictions of urban landscapes.

Smart was born and educated in Adelaide where he worked as an Art teacher. After departing for Europe in 1948 he studied in Paris at La Grande Chaumière, and later at the Académie Montmartre under Fernand Léger. He returned to Australia 1951, living in Sydney, and began exhibiting frequently in 1957. In 1963, he moved to Italy, and in 1971 after a successful exhibition in London, bought "Posticcia Nuova" near Arezzo in Tuscany where he resided with his partner until his death.

His autobiography, Not Quite Straight, was published in 1996. A major retrospective of his works travelled around Australian art galleries 1999–2000.