Guy Grey-Smith AM (1916 –1981) was an Australian painter, printmaker and ceramicist. Grey-Smith pioneered modernism in Western Australia, and has been described as “one of Australia’s most significant artists of the 20th century”. He formed the Perth Group in the late 1950s with fellow artists Robert Juniper Brian McKay, Tom Gibbons and Maurice Stubbs. The group’s aim was to promote European modernism, which was not yet accepted in Australia. He travelled throughout the state, including the Kimberley, Pilbara, Goldfields and South West regions, drawing and making notes in order to produce larger works back in his studio.

At the time of his death, his work was increasingly achieving recognition and is held in high regard today. In December 2007, Christie’s auctioned one of his landscape paintings with an estimate of £1500 to £2500. The painting sold for £29,300 (A$64,000).

He won the Perth Prize for best Western Australian entry in 1955 and 1963, and the Perth Prize in 1964. In 1959, he was awarded the Murdoch Prize and the Robin Hood Art Prize in 1962.

He received the St George’s Cathedral Prize in 1966 and 1967, and the Walter Murdoch Prize in 1967 and 1968.

Grey-Smith was honoured with a Special Distinguished Artist and Scholar Grant from the Australia Council for the Arts in 1973 and an Order of Australia in 1981.

In 2012, a new biography of the artist by Andrew Gaynor was published.