Born in Greenwich Village, New York, Bernard Brussel-Smith studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia (five-year scholarship), and the New School for Social Research, New York. He received a Cresson Traveling Scholarship in 1935 for study abroad. He was elected an Associate Member of the National Academy in 1952, and a Member in 1973. He taught at the Brooklyn Museum, Cooper Union, City College, and the National Academy.

Brussel-Smith spent most of his life in the New York area and was widely known for his posters of the New York Auto Show in the 1950s and 60s. He studied with Stanley William Hayter in Paris from 1957 to 1958, developing a form of relief etching inspired by the process used by William Blake. Brussel-Smith, with his wife Mildred and son Peter, spent many summers from 1957 to 1980 in Collonges-la-Rouge, France.

One-person exhibitions of work by Brussel-Smith include Galerie St. Jacques, Collonges-la-Rouge, France, 1969 and 1970; Musée Ernest-Rupin, Brive, France, 1976; the Olthuysen Ateliers, Rotterdam, Holland, 1978; the Madison de la Siréne, Collonges-la-Rouge, 1979; the Katonah Library, New York; the Desert Museum, Palm Springs, California, 1980; the Galerie Maas, Rotterdam, 1981; and the Bethesda Art Gallery, Maryland, 1982.

A retrospective of the artist’s work was held at Fairleigh Dickinson University Library in Madison, New Jersey,1983. In the summer of 1988, the Sterling Library of Yale University mounted an exhibition of the artist’s graphic work to honor his donation of a comprehensive archive of prints and the majority of his blocks. And in 1989, a memorial exhibition was held at the Galerie St. Jacques, Collonges-la-Rouge, France.

In addition to the holdings of prints at the Fairleigh Dickinson University Library and the Sterling Library of Yale University, the artist’s graphic work is represented in the permanent collections of the Boston Museum; New-York Historical Society; New York Public Library; National Academy of Design, New York; National Museum of American Art; Smithsonian Air and Space Museum; Library of Congress; Hudson River Museum, Yonkers; Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; Farnsworth Museum, Rockland, Maine; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Philadelphia Free Library; The Oklahoma City Museum; Boymans Museum, Rotterdam; and the Lenin Library, Moscow.