Matthew Ivan Smith was born into a particularly scholarly family. His father, director of the mathematics department at Columbia University, specialized in “topographic” mathematics. His mother, Suzanne Bloch, was a student of Nadia Boulanger and was passionate about ancient music that she taught at the Julliard school. She was the daughter of Ernst Bloch, the composer. Matthew was an autistic child obsessed with the spatial relationships that he constantly depicted in his drawings. Horrified by his art, which she considered as mediocre, his mother enrolled him in the Art Students League to teach him how to draw “better”. Matthew resisted the injunction and continued to represent his vision of the world. He then lived alone but marginal. Since his mother died a few years ago, we have had no more information about him.