Wood engraver Bernard Brussel-Smith was born in New York City’s Greenwich Village. He studied lithography at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts from 1931-1936 under Roy Cleveland Nurse and Henry McCarter. Brussel-Smith later discovered wood engraving at the New School for Social Research in New York, where he studied under Fritz Eichenberg beginning in 1941. His aptitude soon earned him a place as teacher’s assistant to Eichenberg. From that time, wood engraving became the young artist’s chosen medium throughout his career of nearly fifty years.

In 1957 and 1958 Brussel-Smith studied on a fellowship in France with printmaker Stanley William Hayter, working on experimental printmaking techniques at his famed studio. The south of France became the summer residence for the Brussel-Smith family for years thereafter.

Brussel-Smith worked as a commercial artist and illustrator, and was hired by many leading publications and major corporations. His avocational works were often sympathetic portrayals of everyday working men and women in the course of their daily lives.

He taught at the Brooklyn Museum, Cooper Union, City College, and at the National Academy, where he was elected an Associate Member in 1952. Bernard Brussel-Smith died at Bedford Hills, NY, in 1988.