It is with great sadness that we announce the death of the distinguished art critic, writer and poet Edward Lucie-Smith (1933–2026). For the last fifteen years, Edward served as Artlyst’s Chief Reviewer, bringing unrivalled knowledge, sharp critical insight and an unmistakable literary voice to our publication. His reviews challenged convention, celebrated artistic achievement and never shied away from difficult questions. A towering figure in post-war art criticism, Edward leaves behind an extraordinary body of work that shaped generations of artists, writers and readers. His absence will be felt by everyone at Artlyst and throughout the international art community.
Millicent Fawcett by Gillian Wearing
Banal Public Statues – We Deserve Better – Edward Lucie-Smith
Jul 10, 2021
Antony Gormley, Aldburgh Beach photo courtesy Caroline Wiseman
UK Art Can Be A Ball Of Confusion – Edward Lucie-Smith
Feb 23, 2021
Hauser & Wirth, London ©Artlyst
Public Art Galleries vs Commercial Who Will Win – Edward Lucie-Smith
Jul 29, 2020
Frieze London © Artlyst
What I Don’t Like About The Contemporary Art Scene – Edward Lucie-Smith
Jan 1, 2020
Ai Wewei, Royal Academy of Arts ©Artlyst
Best Art Of The 21st Century? – In Your Dreams – Edward Lucie-Smith
Sep 29, 2019
Turner Prize 2018
Zombie Formalism: Ticking The Right Boxes Be Damned – Edward Lucie-Smith
Jan 3 2019
Edward Lucie-Smith, 2018 ©Artlyst
Turner Prize Smug-Fest Crashes And Bores – Edward Lucie-Smith
Sep 24, 2018
Judy Chicago, Menstruation Bathroom, 1995, mixed media, reinstallation at LAMOCA of 1972 Menstruation Bathroom from Womanhouse, 1995. © Judy Chicago
Women Need More Recognition For Their Contribution To Visual Arts – Edward Lucie-Smith
Aug 20, 2018
Royal Academy of Arts
RA’s 250th Anniversary A Triumph Of The Wall? – Edward Lucie-Smith
Jun 11, 2018
Pablo Picasso Le Rêve 1932
Pablo Picasso: Genius Or Just Another Misogynistic Pig – Edward Lucie-Smith
Mar 6, 2018
Edward Lucie-Smith, 2017 ©Artlyst
Things I Hate About The British Art World Today – Edward Lucie-Smith
Dec 31, 2017
Queer Art At Tate – My Take By Edward Lucie-Smith
Apr 5, 2017
Edward Lucie-Smith (1933–2026)
Edward Lucie-Smith was a Jamaican-born British art critic, poet and author who spent more than six decades making the art world legible and occasionally uncomfortable, and has died aged 93. He published more than a hundred books and remained a working critic to the end, as opinionated and as readable as he had ever been.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1933, he came to Britain in 1946, was educated at the King’s School Canterbury, and read History at Merton College Oxford. After two years in the Royal Air Force and a decade writing advertising copy in London, he committed to freelance writing in 1966 and never looked back.
His first reputation was as a poet. A Tropical Childhood and Other Poems, published in 1961, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize and the Arts Council Triennial Award. He succeeded Philip Hobsbaum as leader of The Group, the influential mid-century circle of London poets, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1964, and co-founded the small press Turret Books the following year. The move into art criticism never entirely left poetry behind. He wrote with a sense of rhythm, a preference for the concrete over the abstract, and an instinct for the telling detail that most art writers never develop.
What made him genuinely unusual, and genuinely enjoyable to read, was that it was almost impossible to separate the critic from the man. His personality was fully present on the page: curious, irreverent, mischievous when the occasion called for it, and always willing to say what he actually thought rather than what the moment seemed to require. He took visible pleasure in puncturing solemnity wherever he found it, and reading him, you always knew exactly who you were dealing with.
His turn toward art history in the late 1960s produced a body of work remarkable for its range and its accessibility. Movements in Art since 1945, first published in 1969 and regularly updated, became one of the most widely used survey texts in art education worldwide, covering an enormous amount of ground without ever becoming a chore. Symbolist Art from 1972 remains a standard reference, The Invented Eye from 1975 offered a framework for thinking about photography that was well ahead of its time, and Art Today from 1977 mapped the international contemporary scene with a breadth that only someone with his extraordinary range of contacts could have managed.
He interviewed Andy Warhol. He knew David Hockney. He was there for the swinging sixties, the seventies and the eighties, and he never stopped paying attention to what came after.
Top Photo: Edward Lucie-Smith in front of the Merz Barn Wall, Kurt Schwitters © P C Robinson Artlyst 2026