David Smith
Three Ovals Soar, 1960

 Home


David Smith American, 1906-196

Works by David Smith on display outdoors:
The Sitting Printer, 1954-55
Bronze
7' 3" x 15 3/4" x 17"

Portrait of a Lady Painter, 1954; 1956-57
Bronze
64" x 4' 11 3/4" x 12 1/2"

Personage of May, 1957
Bronze
71 5/8" x 31 1/2" x 18 1/2"

Study in Arcs, 1957
Steel painted pink
11' x 9' 6 1/2" x 3' 1/2"

XI Books III Apples, 1959
Stainless steel
7' 10" x 35" x 16 1/4"

Three Ovals Soar, 1960
Stainless steel
11' 3 1/2" x 31" x 23"

Volton XX, 1963
Steel
62 1/2" x 34" x 29"

Becca, 1964
Steel
6' 6" x 47 1/2" x 23 1/2"

Cubi XXI, 1964; Stainless Steel 9' x 11' high.
The Lipman Family Foundation


Works by David Smith on display inside the museum building:
The Iron Woman, 1954-58
Steel painted light green
59 x 55 x 11"

Five Units Equal, 1956
Steel painted light green
6' 1/4" x 16" x 14"

Albany I, 1959
Steel painted black
25 x 25 3/4 x 7 1/4"

Raven V, 1959
Steel and stainless steel
58 3/4 x 55 3/8 x 9 1/2"

Tanktotem VII, 1960
Steel painted black, blue, and white
7' 1/2" x 37" x 14 1/8"

The thirteen David Smith sculptures, purchased in 1967, are the nucleus of the Storm King collection. Eight works are installed outside with a view to the Hudson Highlands in the distance, emulating Smith's placement of his sculptures in the fields surrounding his home and studio at Bolton Landing in the Adirondacks. Five additional masterworks, smaller and more delicate, are inside the museum building.

David Smith was the first artist in America to use the technique of welding to construct sculptures. Created in the last decade of his life, this extraordinary group of works range from the implied violence of the welded, cast bronze assemblage Portrait of a Lady Painter, to the lyrical, painted steel Study in Arcs, a "drawing in space." In the later 1950s Smith invented a new kind of expressive surface by burnishing stainless steel with a circular sander to create the illusion of brushstrokes. In 1962 Smith revisited the technique that he pioneered in the 1930s welding together disparate found objects, like those found in the autobiographical still-life Volton XX.

Back