Oliver Smith

Born: 1918

Death: 1994

Biography:

Oliver Smith was a master scenographer of the American theater. He designed numerous sets for Broadway musicals, the American Ballet Theatre, operas, and films over his legendary career which spanning over 40 years between the 1940s – 1990s. Throughout his career, Smith was nominated for twenty-five Tony Awards, often multiple times in the same year, and won ten, most notably for his work on West Side Story , The Sound of Music , Camelot , and Holly, Dolly! Smith’s Broadway set designs began in the era when settings were primarily painted backdrops, which he painted in the “painterly” tradition inspired by the work of Henri Mattise, an early 20 th -century French artist known for his color and fluid brush strokes. However, his work for the 1967 musical comedy, How Now Dow Jones reflects the evolution of his style influenced by geometric forms found in the work of Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, and Wassily Kandinsky.