Hughie Lee-Smith (September 20, 1915 – February 23, 1999) was an American artist and teacher whose surreal paintings often featured distant figures under vast skies, and desolate urban settings.

Lee-Smith was born in Eustis, Florida, to Luther and Alice Williams Smith; in art school he altered his last name to sound more distinguished.

She was strict with Lee-Smith, and when carnivals came to town she would not allow him to attend, an event which he describes as an experience which "must have sunk into my unconscious and manifested itself years later in my paintings: the balloons, ribbons, pennants.

Like many WPA artists, Lee-Smith was concerned about the contribution art could make to the struggle for social justice and racial equality, and he created a series of lithographs on this theme.

It featured in an exhibition called Hardship to Hope: African American Art from the Karamu Workshop at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, 2929 Richmond Road, Beachwood, Ohio.

Stationed at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center north of Chicago, Lee-Smith was one of three African-American artists commissioned to do “morale-building paintings” of Blacks in the Navy.

After his long journey and hard work, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Art Education (graduating in 1953) from Wayne State University in Detroit.

[4] Of his characteristic work, Holland Cotter wrote in The New York Times: Mr. Lee-Smith's paintings usually have spare settings suggestive of theater stages or bleak urban or seaside landscapes.