The British artist Richard Smith (1931-2016) is best known for his many works in which he explored and experimented with the form and material of a painting, and mostley the canvas. Smith broke through at the beginning of the 1970s, among other things he represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1970. Already in 1975, the Tate Gallery showed a large retrospective of his work, "Seven Exhibitions 1961-75". His sculptural canvases in non-traditional forms were right at the time when European postmodernism was emerging. Smith was one of the leading figures within this genre but also within Pop Art, two directions which he managed to merge in a unique way. Pop art's fascination with popular culture and mass media can be seen, among other things, in the motifs and titles he gave his three-dimensional abstract paintings. Richard Smith started creating his so-called "Kite Paintings" in 1972, when his works became monumental and consisted of loose canvases that were joined together with the help of ropes and strings. In 1976 he traveled from Europe to New York and became part of the vital and experimental art life there. Smith is represented in a large number of institutions worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.