GENERAL DESCRIPTION
David Smith was the foremost American sculptor of the post-World War II period. Born in 1906 in Decatur, Illinois, he studied at Ohio University, Athens; at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana; with Richard Lahey and John Sloan at the Art Students League in New York; and at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. In the 1920s, he became familiar with European Cubism and associated with well-known artists such as Adolph Gottlieb, Arshile Gorky, Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, and Robert Motherwell. Around 1930, he saw illustrations of welded metal sculptures by both Pablo Picasso and Julio González, and their use of iron and steel as sculptural media strongly informed his later work. He acquired a knowledge of metalworking techniques while employed in the car industry in 1925, and this training was of immense significance to him when he began metal sculptures in 1933, after a period of making collages and constructions. Constructed from agricultural machinery and found objects, his early works were essentially a kind of sculptural collage. After being employed again as a welder in defense work during WWII, he returned to art-making around 1945, and moved freely in and out of figurative and non-figurative modes, producing heads, figures, landscapes, mythical and surrealist fantasies. Although non-representational, virtually all Smith's sculptures evoke suggestions of figure, landscape or still-life; the surface quality - polished, painted, burnished or left rough - is always of extreme importance. Many of his works have an open, skeletal structure, as if they were three-dimensional drawings.
From the late 1950s until his death, he worked on several series of more opaque or volumetric works, of which the best known is the Cubi series [1965.32.McD], mostly vertical constructions built up from boxes and cylinders of polished, stainless steel. Smith's structural sense and his adaptation of industrial materials and techniques have had a profound influence on post-WW II sculpture. Smith's work in general as been compared to that of the abstract expressionist painters because of his use of large-scaled gesturelike forms that occupy space in the same way that Franz Kline's forms, say, occupy a wall [1968.18]. Smith's achievement was not, however, to mimic painting, but to create works of resolutely abstract form that commanded the space around them, space that included the viewer.
Adapted from
- Charles Wylie, "From Object to Image: Sculpture, Installation, Media," in Fast forward: contemporary collections for the Dallas Museum of Art, eds. María de Corral and John R. Lane (Dallas Museum of Art ; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 223-227.
- DMA unpublished material.
NOTES
- DMA unpublished material = "Modern American Artists," p. 24. In education files and "Primitivism Biographies," DMA research document, Education files, n.d.
- the David Smith audio asset is duplicated in Piction, so it may show up twice (both audio assets have 1965.32.McD as a related object number)
ASSOCIATED CONTENT CHUNKS (list applicable note links)
AUDIO ASSETS
264287490: UMO. Collections smartphone audio about the artist David Smith, related to Cubi XVII, 1965.32.McD, DMA Collection
VIDEO ASSETS
IMAGE ASSETS
WEB RESOURCES
- The Art Story~Learn more about David Smith's art practice and works.
- David Smith Estate~Peruse the artist's official website.
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES (digitized/non-digitized)
FUN FACTS
TEACHING IDEAS
RULES
set operator as OR
apply to objects where constituent_id equals 624
apply to constituents where id equals 624
Category
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OR
General Description
David Smith was the foremost American sculptor of the post-World War II period. Born in 1906 in Decatur, Illinois, he studied at Ohio University, Athens; at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana; with Richard Lahey and John Sloan at the Art Students League in New York; and at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. In the 1920s, he became familiar with European Cubism and associated with well-known artists such as Adolph Gottlieb, Arshile Gorky, Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, and Robert Motherwell. Around 1930, he saw illustrations of welded metal sculptures by both Pablo Picasso and Julio González, and their use of iron and steel as sculptural media strongly informed his later work. He acquired a knowledge of metalworking techniques while employed in the car industry in 1925, and this training was of immense significance to him when he began metal sculptures in 1933, after a period of making collages and constructions. Constructed from agricultural machinery and found objects, his early works were essentially a kind of sculptural collage. After being employed again as a welder in defense work during WWII, he returned to art-making around 1945, and moved freely in and out of figurative and non-figurative modes, producing heads, figures, landscapes, mythical and surrealist fantasies. Although non-representational, virtually all Smith's sculptures evoke suggestions of figure, landscape or still-life; the surface quality - polished, painted, burnished or left rough - is always of extreme importance. Many of his works have an open, skeletal structure, as if they were three-dimensional drawings.
From the late 1950s until his death, he worked on several series of more opaque or volumetric works, of which the best known is the Cubi series [1965.32.McD], mostly vertical constructions built up from boxes and cylinders of polished, stainless steel. Smith's structural sense and his adaptation of industrial materials and techniques have had a profound influence on post-WW II sculpture. Smith's work in general as been compared to that of the abstract expressionist painters because of his use of large-scaled gesturelike forms that occupy space in the same way that Franz Kline's forms, say, occupy a wall [1968.18]. Smith's achievement was not, however, to mimic painting, but to create works of resolutely abstract form that commanded the space around them, space that included the viewer.
Adapted from
- Charles Wylie, "From Object to Image: Sculpture, Installation, Media," in Fast forward: contemporary collections for the Dallas Museum of Art, eds. María de Corral and John R. Lane (Dallas Museum of Art ; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 223-227.
- DMA unpublished material.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
(digitized/non-digitized)
Web Resources
- The Art Story~Learn more about David Smith's art practice and works.
- David Smith Estate~Peruse the artist's official website.
Notes
- DMA unpublished material = "Modern American Artists," p. 24. In education files and "Primitivism Biographies," DMA research document, Education files, n.d.
- the David Smith audio asset is duplicated in Piction, so it may show up twice (both audio assets have 1965.32.McD as a related object number)
rules
Apply To
Constituents
id
Equals
624
source file
artists_and_designers-0190.xml.nores