SMITH, John I. (1927-2004)

Born in London, England, sculptor John Ivor Smith came to Montreal at the age of 13 as one of the children evacuated from London during the German bombardments of World War II. In Montreal, Smith earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of McGill in 1948. He started a career as an advertising director at Northern Electric Company while at taking visual arts courses on the side at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. There, he took classes from Jacques de Tonnancour, Eldon Grier at Arthur Lismer. Smith very much liked sculpture, and his first works were made mostly of wood. In 1955, he earned a Canada Council Junior Fellowship to study new and ancient sculpture techniques in Italy. The rising popularity of more experimental plastic materials like resins in the 1950s-1960s pushed Smith’s work to new horizons. He experimented with more industrial materials like reinforced polyester resin. Two of his reinforced polyester works, Standing Female Torso and Winged Figure, were shown at Expo 67 in Montreal. His work expresses his excellent artisanal sculpting talent and his irrepressible humour. In 1966, he was hired as a sculpting professor at the Concordia University where he became an associate professor of fine arts and the department chair of sculpture until 1982. He spent his final years in Duncan, British Columbia where he died in 2004.