David Smith (sculptor)
David Smith ( born March 9, 1906 in Decatur, Indiana, † May 23, 1965 in Bennington, Vermont) was an American painter and sculptor who is assigned to the abstract expressionism. He is known for his large steel sculptures (especially the Cubi and the Voltri series) known.
Life and work
David Smith 's father Harvey was an engineer with a telephone company, his mother Golda teacher. Initially, Smith was employed as a welder in a car factory in South Bend (Indiana ), where he skills in metalworking appropriated. After studying at Ohio University and the University of Notre Dame, he joined the Art Students League of New York, where he became interested in the works of Picasso, Mondrian, Kandinsky and the Russian Constructivists by the tschechischenen painter Jan Matulka. 1927 married the artist Dorothy Dehner and became friends with other great artists of this period such as Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and especially John D. Graham ( 1886-1961 ), who introduced him to abstract art.
Inspired by his paintings and welded sculptures by Pablo Picasso and Julio González, he began by first wood sculptures in 1932, in the years 1933/34, sculptures in steel to customize. He used preferably randomly found material, such as tools and machine parts, which he called " picturesque " put together. In one of his first sculptures Construction ( Lyndhaven ) of 1932, which was created after a stay of several months in the Virgin Islands, he said molded parts made of lead with iron rods and pieces of coral to a standing figure. After a stay in Europe 1935/36, designed Smith, influenced by the work of Ludwig Gies and Charles Goetz, in the years 1937 to 1940 his Medals for Dishonor ( Unehrenmedaillen ). The fifteen bronze plaques set in the tradition of Goya's an indictment of the moral hypocrisy and the horrors of war dar. Bombing Civilian Populations (1939 ) shows a tattered female torso, which releases an unborn child. Meanwhile, Smith working as a welder in a factory and could only turn back to the late 1940s the plastic. In 1950, with Blackburn - Song of an Irish Blacksmith ( Blackburn: Song of an Irish Blacksmith ) a sculpture made of steel and bronze, floral structures exhibited in a tree-like shape and fantastic elements included.
In 1962 he was invited by the Italian Government to produce sculptures for the exhibition " Festival of Two Worlds" in Spoleto, for which he was an abandoned steel mill in Voltri was provided. Within 30 days he put the 27 works of his series Voltri sculptures done. Then he made a Cubi series. Cubi XXVIII was acquired on 28 November 2005 at Sotheby 's New York auction with a price of 23.8 million dollars from the art dealer Larry Gagosian. It became the most expensive contemporary artwork.
David Smith in 1954 and 1958 participants in the Venice Biennale in 1957 and had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He was at the documenta II ( 1959), Documenta III (1964 ), and also represented posthumously at the documenta 4 (1968) and documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977.
1965 David Smith died at the age of 59 years in a car accident.