Alexis Smith, an artist whose work focused on the proliferation of images in society from the 1970s on, worked primarily in collage, but also produced artists’ books, installations and public artworks, including a permanent installation for the restaurant at the Getty Center in Los Angeles titled Taste (1997). Having studied under California artists Vija Celmins and Robert Irwin at UC Irvine, receiving her BA in 1970, Smith made a name for herself as a mainstay of the California art scene.
Smith, whose work was featured in the prominent exhibition Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution at MoMA PS1 in 2008, combined found objects with images she cut out of magazines and newspapers . Her subjects included Hollywood and the entertainment industry, fashion, commerce and the imagery of women in those contexts. Her last retrospective, Alexis Smith: The American Way, was on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego in 2022–23. Her work was featured at the Whitney Biennials of 1975, 79 and 81 and is in the collections of the Whitney, MoMA and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among many others.
