David Smith (sculptor)
Encyclopedia
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
sculptor and painter, best known for creating large steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
abstract geometric sculptures.
Biography
David Roland Smith was born on March 9, 1906 in DecaturDecatur, Indiana
Decatur is a city in Root and Washington townships, Adams County, Indiana, United States. The city, which serves as the county seat of Adams County, takes its name after the prominent war hero Stephen Decatur, Jr., one of the captains of the original 6 frigates of the US navy...
, Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
and moved to Paulding, Ohio
Paulding, Ohio
Paulding is a village in and the county seat of Paulding County, Ohio, United States. It is located predominantly in Paulding Township. The population was 3,595 at the 2000 census.-History:...
in 1921, where he attended high school. From 1924-25, he attended Ohio University
Ohio University
Ohio University is a public university located in the Midwestern United States in Athens, Ohio, situated on an campus...
in Athens (one year) and the University of Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame
The University of Notre Dame du Lac is a Catholic research university located in Notre Dame, an unincorporated community north of the city of South Bend, in St. Joseph County, Indiana, United States...
, which he left after two weeks because there were no art courses. In between, Smith took a summer job working on the assembly line of an automobile factory.
Moving to New York in 1926, he met Dorothy Dehner
Dorothy Dehner
-Biography:She grew up in Cleveland.In 1918, she took classes at the Pasadena Playhouse, and studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.In 1922, she moved to New York City, and studied at the Art Students League....
(to whom he was married from 1927 to 1952) and joined her painting studies at the Art Students League of New York
Art Students League of New York
The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in New York City. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a...
. Among his teachers were the American painter John Sloan
John French Sloan
John French Sloan was an American artist. As a member of The Eight, he became a leading figure in the Ashcan School of realist artists. He was known for his urban genre painting and ability to capture the essence of neighborhood life in New York City, often through his window...
and the Czech modernist painter Jan Matulka
Jan Matulka
Jan Matulka was a Czech-American modern artist originally from Bohemia. Matulka's style would range from Abstract expressionism to landscapes, sometimes in the same day.-Early life:...
, who had studied with Hans Hofmann
Hans Hofmann
Hans Hofmann was a German-born American abstract expressionist painter.-Biography:Hofmann was born in Weißenburg, Bavaria on March 21, 1880, the son of Theodor and Franziska Hofmann. When he was six he moved with his family to Munich...
. Matulka introduced Smith to the work of Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, Mondrian
Piet Mondrian
Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1906 Mondrian , was a Dutch painter.He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism...
, Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...
, and the Russian Constructivists
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...
.
Through the Russian émigré artist John Graham, Smith met avant-garde artists such as Stuart Davis
Stuart Davis (painter)
Stuart Davis , was an early American modernist painter. He was well known for his jazz influenced, proto pop art paintings of the 1940s and 1950s, bold, brash, and colorful as well as his ashcan pictures in the early years of the 20th century.-Biography:He was born in Philadelphia to Edward Wyatt...
, Arshile Gorky
Arshile Gorky
Arshile Gorky was an Armenian-born American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. As such, his works were often speculated to have been informed by the suffering and loss he experienced of the Armenian genocide.-Early life:...
and Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....
. He also discovered the welded sculpture
Welded sculpture
Welded sculpture is an art form in which sculpture is made using welding techniques. Welding was increasingly used in sculpture from the 1930s as new industrial processes such as arc welding were adapted to aesthetic purposes...
s of Julio González
Julio González (sculptor)
Juli González i Pellicer was a Catalan abstract and cubist painter and sculptor.-Biography:Born in Barcelona, as a young man he worked with his older brother, Joan, in his father's metal smith workshop. Both brothers took evening classes in art at the Escuela de Bellas Artes...
and Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, which led to an increasing interest in combining painting and construction. In 1932, he installed a forge and anvil in his studio at the farm in Bolton Landing that he and Dehner had bought a few years earlier. Smith started by making three-dimensional objects from wood, wire, coral, soldered metal and other found materials but soon graduated to using an oxyacetylene torch to weld metal heads, which are probably the first welded metal sculptures ever made in the United States.
In 1940, the Smiths distanced themselves from the New York art scene and moved permanently to Bolton Landing. Just a year later, Smith sculptures were included in two traveling exhibitions organized by the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
and were shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
's Annual exhibition in New York.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Smith worked as a welder for the American Locomotive Company
American Locomotive Company
The American Locomotive Company, often shortened to ALCO or Alco , was a builder of railroad locomotives in the United States.-Early history:...
, assembling locomotives and M7 tanks. He taught at Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College is a private liberal arts college in the United States, and a leader in progressive education since its founding in 1926. Located just 30 minutes north of Midtown Manhattan in southern Westchester County, New York, in the city of Yonkers, this coeducational college offers...
.
After the war, with the additional skills that he had acquired, Smith released his pent-up energy and ideas in a burst of creation between 1945 and 1946. His output soared and he went about perfecting his own, very personal symbolism.
Traditionally, metal sculpture meant bronze casts, which artisans produced using a mold made by the artist. Smith, however, made his sculptures from scratch, welding together pieces of steel and other metals with his torch, in much the same way that a painter applied paint to a canvas; his sculptures are almost always unique works.
Smith, who often said, "I belong with the painters," made sculptures of subjects that had never before been shown in three dimensions. He made sculptural landscapes (e. g. Hudson River Landscape), still life sculptures (e. g. Head as Still Life) and even a sculpture of a page of writing (The Letter). Perhaps his most revolutionary concept was that the only difference between painting and sculpture was the addition of a third dimension; he declared that the sculptor's "conception is as free as a that of the painter. His wealth of response is as great as his draftsmanship."
Smith was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is a nonprofit corporation founded in 1937 by philanthropist Solomon R. Guggenheim and artist Hilla von Rebay. The first museum established by the foundation was the "Museum of Non-Objective Art", which was housed in rented space on Park Avenue in New York....
Fellowship in 1950, which was renewed the following year. Freed from financial constraints, he made more and larger pieces, and for the first time was able to afford to make whole sculptures in stainless steel. He also began his practice of making sculptures in series, the first of which were the Agricolas of 1951-59. He separated from Dehner in 1950, with divorce in 1952.
David Smith represented the United States in the 1951 International Biennale in Sao Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
, Brazil, and at the Venice Biennial in 1954 and 1958. He gained increasingly recognition, lecturing at universities and participating in symposia; six of his sculptures were included in an exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, that traveled to Paris, Zurich, Düsseldorf, Stockholm, Helsinki, and Oslo in 1953-54; he was given a retrospective exhibition by MoMA in 1957.
Beginning in the mid 1950s, Smith explored the technique of burnishing his stainless steel sculptures with a sander, a technique that would find its fullest expression in his Cubi
Cubi
Cubi is a series of stainless steel sculptures that are made up of cubes, rectangular solids and cylinders with spheroidal or flat endcaps. This series of 28 sculptures was the last of the artistic output of the American sculptor David Smith...
series (1961–65). The scale of his works continued to increase – Tanktotem III of 1953 is 7’ tall; Zig I from 1961 is 8’; and 5 Ciarcs from 1963 is almost 13’ tall.
Smith’s family was also getting bigger, Smith re-married and had two daughters, Rebecca (born 1954) and Candida (born 1955). He named quite a few of his later works in honor of his children (e.g., Bec-Dida Day, 1963, Rebecca Circle, 1961, Hi Candida, 1965).
The February 1960 issue of Arts magazine was devoted to Smith’s work and later that year he had his first West Coast exhibition, a solo show at the Everett Ellin Gallery in Los Angeles. The following year he rejected a third place award at the Carnegie International, saying “the awards system in our day is archaic.” Also in 1961, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, organized an exhibition of fifty Smith sculptures that traveled throughout the United States until the spring of 1963.
In 1962, the Italian government invited Smith to make sculptures for the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto. Given open access to an abandoned steel mill and provided with a group of assistants, he produced an amazing 27 pieces in 30 days. Not yet finished with the themes he developed, he had tons of steel shipped from Italy to Bolton Landing and over the next 18 months he made another 25 sculptures known as the Voltri-Bolton series.
In 1964 he received a Creative Arts Award from Brandeis University and in February 1965 was appointed by Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
to the National Council on the Arts. He died in a car crash on May 23 of that year. He was 59 years old.
Major works
Cubi XXVIII, executed in 1965, is the name of the last of the CubiCubi
Cubi is a series of stainless steel sculptures that are made up of cubes, rectangular solids and cylinders with spheroidal or flat endcaps. This series of 28 sculptures was the last of the artistic output of the American sculptor David Smith...
series of large metal sculptures created Smith. Formerly housed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
, on November 9, 2005, the sculpture became the most expensive work of contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
ever sold at auction, selling for $23.8 million
Million
One million or one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The word is derived from the early Italian millione , from mille, "thousand", plus the augmentative suffix -one.In scientific notation, it is written as or just 106...
at Sotheby's
Sotheby's
Sotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish...
Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
auction house to art dealer Larry Gagosian who was acting on behalf of billionaire art collector Eli Broad
Eli Broad
Eli Broad is an American businessman from Detroit, Michigan who resides in Los Angeles, California.-Life and career:An only child, Broad was born in the Bronx to Lithuanian Jewish immigrant parents. His father was a housepainter, his mother was a dressmaker. His family moved to Detroit when he...
. "This exceedingly rare work was the pinnacle of a four-decade career," said Tobias Meyer, Sotheby's worldwide head of contemporary art and the auctioneer for the evening. It was the last significant work that Smith produced before he unexpectedly died in a car crash.
Pillar of Sundays, produced in August 1945, was inspired by Smith's memories of events, rituals, foods, and sounds associated with the Sundays of his teen years. His mother, Golda, was active in the Methodist Episcopal church
United Methodist Church
The United Methodist Church is a Methodist Christian denomination which is both mainline Protestant and evangelical. Founded in 1968 by the union of The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church, the UMC traces its roots back to the revival movement of John and Charles Wesley...
two doors away from his home in small-town Paulding, Ohio
Paulding, Ohio
Paulding is a village in and the county seat of Paulding County, Ohio, United States. It is located predominantly in Paulding Township. The population was 3,595 at the 2000 census.-History:...
. Some of the images, attached like leaves on a tree, are obvious, such as birds and an inscribed heart, but on the whole, the sculpture is ambiguous, suggestive, and intriguing. In a 1959 speech at Ohio University
Ohio University
Ohio University is a public university located in the Midwestern United States in Athens, Ohio, situated on an campus...
, Smith stated
When I lived and studied in Ohio, I had a very vague sense of what art was. Everyone I knew who used the reverent word was almost as unsure and insecure. Mostly art was reproductions, from far away, from an age past and from some golden shore, certainly from no place like the mud banks of the AuglaizeAuglaize RiverThe Auglaize River is a tributary of the Maumee River in northwestern Ohio in the United States. It drains a primarily rural farming area in the watershed of Lake Erie. The name of the river either comes from a Shawnee phrase meaning "fallen timbers" or a French term for "frozen water."It rises in...
or the MaumeeMaumee RiverThe Maumee River is a river in northwestern Ohio and northeastern Indiana in the United States. It is formed at Fort Wayne, Indiana by the confluence of the St. Joseph and St. Marys rivers, and meanders northeastwardly for through an agricultural region of glacial moraines before flowing into the...
, and there didn’t seem much chance that it could come from Paulding County.
The sculpture is in the collection of the Indiana University Art Museum
Indiana University Art Museum
The Indiana University Art Museum is located on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington in Bloomington, Indiana, USA. Established in 1941, the museum currently holds several internationally acclaimed collections, ranging from ancient gold jewelry and African masks to paintings by Claude Monet...
. Smith taught art at Indiana University South Bend
Indiana University South Bend
Indiana University South Bend is the third largest campus of the Indiana University system. It is popularly known as IUSB or IU South Bend. It is located in South Bend, Indiana, in St. Joseph County, Indiana.-History:...
during the 1954-1955 academic year.
Recent Solo Exhibitions (Selection)
- 2011–2012: Touring exhibition David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy
- January 28–April 15, 2012: Wexner Center for the ArtsWexner Center for the ArtsThe Wexner Center for the Arts is The Ohio State University’s multidisciplinary, international laboratory for the exploration and advancement of contemporary art...
. Columbus, OH. - October 6, 2011–January 8, 2012: Whitney Museum of American ArtWhitney Museum of American ArtThe Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
. New York City, NY. - April 3–July 24, 2011: Los Angeles County Museum of ArtLos Angeles County Museum of ArtThe Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
. Los Angeles, CA.
- January 28–April 15, 2012: Wexner Center for the Arts
- February–May 28, 2011: David Smith: Paintings and Works on Paper from the 1950s, American Contemporary Art Gallery, Munich, Germany.
- February 12–May 15, 2011: David Smith Invents, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
See also
- Agricola IAgricola IAgricola I is an abstract sculpture by American artist David Smith. The artwork is located on the grounds at and in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., United States. The word "agricola" means "farmer" in Latin...
by Smith at the Hirshhorn in Washington, D.C. - Environmental sculptureEnvironmental sculptureThe term environmental sculpture is variously defined. A development of the art of the 20th century, environmental sculpture usually creates or alters the environment for the viewer, as opposed to presenting itself figurally or monumentally before the viewer...
Writings
- Sculpture and Writings (ed by Cleve Gray) Thames & Hudson New York/London 1968(new edition 1989) ISBN 978-0500275207
