PALM SPRINGS — Howard Smith, who passed away in 2021 at age 92, was an African-American artist, designer, and teacher, born in New Jersey and educated at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts. In 1962, he was invited by a friend to participate in Young America Presents, a cultural festival in Helsinki, publicly sponsored by the United States but secretly funded by the CIA. Smith, who felt marginalized by the mainstream White art world and out of place with the Black art world in the United States, found an audience and a home in post-Cold War Finland, where he was one of the only Black artists. Over the next 50 years, Smith produced an impressive range of paintings, sculptures, textiles, ceramics, and mixed-media assemblages. He won the Finnish State Design Prize in 2001, and in 2003, he was recognized as a national treasure when he was awarded an artist’s pension from the Finnish state. Despite his fame in the European nation, however, Smith has remained virtually unknown in the States. The Art and Design of Howard Smith at the Palm Springs Art Museum is the first retrospective of Smith’s works in his home country.The retrospective is beguiling because it blurs the distinctions between art, design, and décor. I was struck by the tensions between Smith’s minimal black and white works, the almost wall-sized floral textiles, and some smaller but blockier pieces, reminiscent of second-wave Color field artists like Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Helen Frankenthaler. The lineup of the exhibition writ large feels like a bizarre mashup of Joan Miró, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, and William Baziotes. Howard Smith, “Black Angel” (1970), screenprint on paperSmith’s surfaces are less energetic and less technically skilled than those, but more playful. It is Smith’s playfulness (but also his skill) that enables him to produce enormous textiles that somehow go beyond design to flirt with what we might call “art.” Some of the more memorable pieces on view straddle the seemingly paradoxical world of design and politics, such as “Untitled” from 1985. Here, the large graphic patterns and expressive forms that came to embody Finnish design morph into serpentine facial details. The long, slender necks and elongated heads evoke African sculptural traditions like Dan Masks or even the Clayman Fang Head. Smith’s representation of Blackness within an overwhelmingly White Scandinavian art world is a profound instance of simultaneous engagement and resistance. Though Smith thrived as a designer in Finland, he aspired to be an artist of political consequence. One example: “America?,” a mixed-media collage on wood that foregrounds a silhouetted head in profile against a whitewashed background. Above and to the left of the figure’s nose are four newspaper clippings. The only fully legible phrases are “Number 1” and “The Kremlin Mood.” Smith contextualizes this piece via an inscription on the back: “This work was done at and after the Montgomery Riots,” most likely in reference to either the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march or the assault on the Freedom Riders in 1961. Possibly intended as a powerful statement on the many contradictions of America, it misses its mark. The title is too precise, the figure not precise enough, the text both too on-point and too elusive. Howard Smith, “Untitled” (1985), paper cut on handmade paper (photo courtesy Palm Springs Art Museum)More successful is “Black Angel” (1970), a lovely screen print on paper that marries Smith’s signature Scandinavian sense of design with the Japanese notion of ma — the harmonious use of negative space. I love the proportionality of the angel with its block bottom and winged torso, suggesting both groundedness and flight. The thin red vertical line, slightly diagonal, connects the internal energy of the angel with the red crown or red dome or red heaven above. The starkness of the angel connotes power, strength. This piece does similar cultural work to “America?” but does not get lost in the rhetoric of figuration and explication, instead hitting the sweet spot between art, design, and cultural commentary. The work simultaneously talks to American Abstract Expressionism, Scandinavian Design, and Japanese minimalism, but nevertheless remains fully Smith.Smith’s astonishingly broad body of work made me rethink the rather arbitrary distinctions between the various tiers of aesthetic production. It will be fascinating to see if this exhibition and the generous bilingual exhibition catalog will alter Smith’s reputation in this nation. I suspect — and hope — they will.Howard Smith, “Yellow Iris 4 X” (1978), commercial screenprint (photo by and courtesy RJ Sánchez/Solstream Studios)Installation view of The Art and Design of Howard SmithThe Art and Design of Howard Smith continues at Palm Springs Art Museum (101 North Museum Drive, Palm Springs, California) through February 23, 2026. The exhibition was co-organized by the Espoo Museum of Modern Art in Finland, and curated by Steven Wolf.