"Art is the raw stuff which comes from aggressiveness by men who got that way fighting for survival."
Among the greatest American sculptors of the twentieth century, David Smith was the first to work with welded metal. His work is characterized by a ruggedness and lack of polish, combining fragments of metal, referring to the formative experiences he had in his youth while working in a car body workshop and a welder for the American Locomotive Company during World War II. Smith studied painting and always claimed: "I belong with the painters," yet turned to three-dimensional space, making sculptures with means of industrial manufacturing and therefore proving to be an important influence on later Minimalism. Smith fruitfully combined a range of influences from European modernism including Cubism, Surrealism, and Constructivism. Collage was an important technique, which determined his compositional strategy. Smith created sculptures through an assemblage of elements, often combining found objects like tools. The resulting heterogeneous forms are difficult to perceive in their entirety, forcing to be considered part by part. Smith also dispersed pictorial motifs around the edge of the sculpture, compelling the viewer to change positions.
One of Smith's most important formal innovations was to abandon the idea of a centralized sculpture, originating around a "core", which was pervasive in modern sculpture. Smith replaced this notion with the idea of "drawing in space." He would use thin wire to produce linear, transparent sculptures with figurative motifs at their edges. Smith´s subjects encompassed the figure and landscape, often revolving around symbols of violence, the most prominent of which bearing the form of a totem and being based on Freud´s ideas on totems. Smith also produced gestural, almost calligraphic marks made with egg yolk, Chinese ink and brushes and, in the late 1950s, the ‘sprays’. He usually signed his drawings with the ancient Greek letters delta and sigma, meant to stand for his initials.
Publications
Works
Exhibitions
The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan
Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York, NY, USA
Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, Switzerland
Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris, France
Ordovas Gallery, London, UK
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, USA
Craig F. Starr Gallery, New York, NY, USA
Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY, USA
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, USA; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, USA
Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, USA
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., USA
American Contemporary Art Gallery, Munich, Germany
IVAM, Centro Julio González, Valencia, Spain
Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY, USA
Craig F. Starr Gallery, New York, NY, USA
Russell Bowman Gallery, Chicago, IL, USA
Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY, USA
Silvermine Guild Arts Center, New Canaan, CT, USA; The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, NY, USA
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, USA; Centre Georges Pompidou, Museé national d'art Moderne, Paris, France; Tate Modern, London, UK
Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY, USA; London, UK
Knoedler & Company, New York, NY, USA
American Contemporary Art Gallery, Munich, Germany
Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY, USA
Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX, USA
IVAM, Centro Julio González, Valencia, Spain
Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY, USA
American Contemporary Art Gallery, Munich, Germany
École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, Chapelle des Petits-Augins, Paris, France
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Washburn Gallery, New York, NY, USA
Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland, Oregon, USA (organized by Arts Management Services / American Federation of Arts, New York, USA); Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane University, New Orleans, USA; Mary and Leigh Block Art Museum, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA; Lyman Allyn Museum of Art, Connecticut College, New London, USA; National Academy of Design Museum, New York, USA
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA
Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY, USA; London, UK
Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York, NY, USA
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY, USA
Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, NY, USA; Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, CA, USA
Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York, NY, USA
Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York, NY, USA
Columbus Museum of Art, OH, USA (organized by Independent Curators Inc., New York, USA); DePree Art Center, Hope College, Holland, Michigan & Boston University Art Gallery, Boston, MA, USA
Hill Gallery, Birmingham, MI, USA
IVAM, Centro Julio González, Valencia & Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Prada MilanoArte, Milan, Italy
Knoedler & Co, New York, NY, USA
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TE, USA
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Washburn Gallery, New York, NY, USA
Knoedler Gallery, New York, NY, USA; Akira Ikeda Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, NY, USA
Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan; Prefectural Museum of Art, Shizuoka, Japan; The Museum of Modern Art, Shiga & Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art, Chiba, Japan
Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Knoedler & Company, New York, NY, USA
Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK