Baltimore-based, South African artist Jo Smail (b. 1943, Durban), is celebrated world-wide for her abstract paintings, drawings, collages, and prints, frequently composed through multiple states of material accruals, subtractions, and modifications. Educated in South Africa at Johannesburg College of Art (1978 & 1975) and the University of Natal, Durban (1963), Smail moved to Baltimore in 1985. She taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art from 1988-2017 , where she is now Professor Emeritus.

Formal exploration as well as invention derive from the artist's personal history - delving into the past and the present with equal weight. Influenced by Apartheid, a devastating studio fire (1995), a life-altering stroke (2000), the socio-political content of personal effects, the natural world, and art history, Smail's artwork has been the subject of myriad exhibitions with reviews printed in The New York Times, Art in America, The Hudson Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Art Forum, Hyperallergic, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Post, among others. Smail has been the subject of a number of publications, books and catalogue with contributions by top scholars such as Terence Maloon and Karen Wilkin. In 2020 her 144-page artist book titled “Flying with Remnant Wings” was released by Goya Contemporary and includes original poems, essays, and images.

Smail has been the recipient of numerous accolades, awards, and residencies including the Trawick Sapphire Prize; multiple Arts Council Awards; Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellowship; Rochefort-en-Terre fellowship in France; a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; and nomination for "Anonymous was a Woman." Smail is represented in private and public collections internationally including: Baltimore Museum of Art; US Embassy, Johannesburg; Chase Manhattan Bank in Johannesburg & New York; Durban Museum; University of the Witwatersrand; Johannesburg Art Museum; Johns Hopkins University Collection; Mobil Corporation Art Collection; National Gallery of South Africa; Pretoria Art Museum; the Cleveland Clinic, among many more. Formerly represented by Goodman Gallery in South Africa, for the last 20 years Smail has been represented by Goya Contemporary Gallery in Baltimore. For many years Smail has also collaborated with fellow South African artist William Kentridge. In March of 2020, the artist opened her first major one-woman retrospective exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art.