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| David
Smith Chronology |
| 1906-25 |
Born
March 9 in Decatur, Indiana. Father, Harvey Martin Smith, was a
telephone engineer and part-time inventor. Mother, Golda Stoler
Smith, was a schoolteacher. 1921, moves with family to Paulding,
Ohio. While still in high school, enrolls in a correspondence course
in cartooning from Cleveland Art School. Studies for one year at
Ohio University, Athens, and briefly at Notre Dame University. Works
for the Studebaker automobile factory (South Bend, Indiana) as a
riveter; also does soldering, spot-welding and works a lathe. Takes
job in Studebaker’s Finance Agency (until 1927). |
| 1929-30 |
Moves
to Washington, D.C., then to New York to work at the Morris Plan
Bank. Meets a young painter, Dorothy Dehner (they marry in 1927),
who is studying at the Art Student’s League (ASL). Smith enrolls
at the ASL, taking evening painting classes with Richard Lahey.
Fall, 1927 until 1932, studies full time at the ASL. Takes classes
with the American realist painter John Sloan, drawing instructor
Kimon Nicolaides, and Czech modernist painter Jan Matulka, a former
pupil of Hans Hoffman. After Matulka’s classes at ASL end in
1928, Smith studies with him privately (to 1931). Matulka introduces
Smith to the works of Mondrian, Picasso, Kandinsky, and the Russian
Constructivists. Smith also explores other aspects of New York’s
cultural life, developing strong interests in jazz and modern dance
that will continue through his life.
February-May, 1928, Smith
works for the A.G. Spalding sporting goods store. May, leaves to
be a seaman on an oil tanker, sailing from Philadelphia through
Panama, to San Pedro, California. Fall, returns to New York. Works
at Spalding (until October 1931) while living with Dehner in Brooklyn. |
| 1929-30 |
Summer,
Smith and Dehner visit Bolton Landing, near Lake George in the Adirondack
Mountains, in upstate New York, where they buy a dilapidated house
and barn on eighty-six acres of land. For next eleven years (until
1940) they go upstate every summer and fall.
Meets John Graham, Polish
émigré, intellectual and artist. Through Graham, meets
avant-garde painters Stuart Davis, Jean Xceron, Arshile Gorky, and
Willem de Kooning. Sees Picasso's 1928 Project for Sculpture
in 1929 issue of Cahiers d’Art. Experiments with painting,
collage, and reliefs created in an abstract Surrealist style. Becomes
increasingly interested in combining construction and painting. |
| 1931-33 |
Smith
and Dehner travel to St. Thomas, Virgin Islands (October 1931 - June
1932). Smith paints, assembles small constructions using
pieces of wood, coral and other found objects, casts first stone
sculpture, and experiments with photography.
Summer, 1932, installs
a forge and an anvil in Bolton Landing studio. Makes more constructions
from wood, wire, stone, aluminum rod, soldered metal, and “found”
materials. Begins to weld metal sculptures using oxyacetylene torch. |
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| 1934-36 |
Smith
rents working space in a shed on the Brooklyn waterfront that houses
“Terminal Iron Works, Boiler-Tube Makers and Ship-Deck.”
This is his main studio until 1940. Throughout the 1930s, works
in the mural and public sculpture departments of various U.S. government-sponsored
public works art programs.
John Graham gives Smith
a Julio González sculpture, Head (c. 1927). October
1935, travels for the first time to Europe, with Dehner. After a
month in Paris, they visit Athens, Crete, Naples, Malta, Marseilles
and London, then travel by steamer ship to Leningrad and Moscow
for a twenty-one day tour. Sees the great collection at the Museum
of Modern Western Art, including works by Matisse, Cézanne,
and Picasso. July 4, returns to New York. |
| 1937 |
Joins
the newly organized American Abstract Artists group (while also
a member of a variety of other artistic groups) and exhibits with
them in 1938 and 1939. Affected by the rise of fascism and German
war medals he had seen in Europe, Smith begins work on a series
of fifteen bronze medallions he calls Medals for Dishonor
(finished and exhibited in 1940). |
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| 1938-39 |
January,
first one-man show (welded iron sculptures and drawings, 1935-38)
opens at Marian Willard’s East River Gallery, in New York City.
Make his first arc-welded sculptures. Exhibits sculpture in a group
show, American Art Today, at the 1939 New York World’s
Fair. |
| 1940-41 |
February,
speaks in favor of abstract art as against the then fashionable
Social Realism in first recorded lecture, “On Abstract
Art in America,” presented at a forum of the United American
Artists group. March, one-man show at Neumann-Willard Gallery,
New York. Positive review by Clement Greenberg in The Nation.
Spring, Smith and
Dehner move permanently to Bolton Landing, taking the name
Terminal Iron Works for his studio. Works as a machinist in
nearby Glens Falls. During the War years, Smith makes and
sells relatively few sculptures. Steel and iron are scarce;
works with other materials including marble, cast aluminum,
and wood. Continues to draw and paint. Themes
range from the violence of war and rape to music and dance
as symbols of creativity. |
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| 1942-49 |
At
Bolton Landing, Smith brings in electricity and builds a cinderblock,
open plan machine-shop studio with a concrete floor. Lives in Schenectady,
New York, (near Albany) and works the midnight to 8 a.m. shift,
6 days a week, for the American Locomotive Company, assembling M7
destroyer tanks and locomotives. After getting off work, often drives
forty miles to Saratoga, where he learns to work with marble while
employed half-days at Saratoga Funeral Monument Yard.
January 1943, included
in a group show, American Sculpture of Our Time, at Willard
and Buchholz Galleries, New York. Clement Greenberg writes in The
Nation about Smith’s Interior (1937): “If
[Smith] is able to maintain the level set in the work he has already
done, he has a chance of becoming the greatest of all American Artists.”
April, one-man show at Willard Gallery, New York (18 sculptures
and 5 drawings from 1939-43). The Museum of Modern Art purchases
its first Smith sculpture, Head (1938).
Summer 1944, moves back
to Bolton Landing to work full-time on his artwork. Immediate post-war
work is strongly symbolic in content; formal invention affected
by Surrealist imagery and ideas. January, one-man show at Willard
and Buchholz Galleries (54 sculptures, 1936-45, including 30 made
in 1944 and 1945). |
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| 1950-52 |
April,
receives Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (renewed 1951). Temporarily
frees Smith from teaching and other jobs. The scale of his work
expands dramatically, the forms become more lyrical and the content
less narrative. Initiates practice of making sustained series
of works over many years, beginning with the Agricola
series (22 sculptures, 1951-1957).
Summer, exhibits in
first European group show, the International Open-Air Exhibition,
at Middelheim Park, Antwerp. December 1952, Smith and Dehner divorce.
During the 1950s, is friendly with other Abstract Expressionist
artists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline,
and Michael Goldberg, as well as with younger artists, such as
Kenneth Noland.
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| 1953 |
Starts
Tanktotem series (1953-1960). Each
Tanktotem incorporates parts of commercial boiler tops that
Smith orders from a catalogue. Explores with increasing
intensity abstract gestural imagery in drawing, using ink
combined with egg yoke, a medium he invented.
January, signs
of increased recognition as Art News lists Smith’s
1952 sculpture exhibition at Willard-Kleeman Gallery one
of the ten best shows of the year. April, while teaching
at the University of Arkansas, marries Jean Freas of Washington,
DC. Six sculptures included in Twelve Modern American
Painters and Sculptors, circulated by the Museum of
Modern Art to France, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Finland,
and Norway. |
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| 1954-55 |
April,
first child, Rebecca (Eve Athena Allen Katherine Rebecca)
is born. June, work included in the XXVII Venice Biennale.
Smith travels to Venice as a delegate to UNESCO’s First
International Congress of Plastic Arts; also visits France.
Lectures on “Tradition,” at Columbia University,
New York.
Begins to place
sculptures in the field around his home and studio at Bolton
Landing. September to June 1955, teaches art at Indiana University,
Bloomington, where he learns about forging from a local blacksmith.
Begins Forging series and continues Tanktotems.
Second child, Candida (Candida Kore Nicolina Rawley Helene),
born in August. |
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| 1956-57 |
February,
publishes “González: First master of the Torch,”
in Art News, a tribute coinciding with González’s
retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. March, one-man show
at Willard. No works are sold.
April through June,
lives with his family in New York City. Paints steel surfaces
in an expressionist style. October, begins Sentinel
series, nine tall vertical structures, several of which use industrial
I-beams. 1957, begins to use new stencil technique to make spray
enamel works on paper and canvas. September, retrospective survey
(sculptures, drawings, paintings, 1932-57) of his work opens at
the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
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| 1958-61 |
Smith
and Freas separate and divorce. One-man shows of his work
the XXIX Venice Biennale and the V Bienal of São
Paulo (1959). Eighteen of twenty-four sculptures completed
in 1960 are painted, a dramatic increase from the past.
1961, begins Zig
series (7 sculptures, 1961-64) and his most famous series,
the Cubis (1961-65), 28 large-scale geometric
stainless steel sculptures burnished to a highly reflective
surface with a circular sander. |
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| 1962-63 |
May
through July, works in Voltri, Italy. Invited by Italian government
to make two sculptures for exhibition in Spoleto during the Fourth
Festival of Two Worlds, instead makes 27 sculptures in 30 days using
a combination of tools, found objects, and created shapes. After
his return to Bolton Landing, makes Voltri and Voltri-Bolton
series (over 40, 1962-63) from old tools and machine parts shipped
from Italy. Polychrome Circle (5 works, 1962) series
characterized by reduced complexity and enlarged scale. Completes
Primo Piano series, three large planar works in steel,
painted white. |
| 1964 |
Receives
Brandeis University Creative Arts Award. Included in III Documenta,
Kassel. Begins Wagons (3 sculptures, 1964) series.
Large parts are cast at commercial foundry in Pennsylvania. Completes
large series of enamel paintings of female nudes from photographs. |
| 1965 |
February,
appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the National Council
on the Arts. May 23, injured in an automobile crash near Bennington,
Vermont. He dies that night. |
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