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Lot Essay
Tony Smith's training as an architect had its legacy in the reduced forms of Untitled: one can perceive some reincarnation and evolution of the ideas that originated in his studies with Archipenko and Moholy-Nagy. It was in part through his extensive contact with the world of art, through his friendships with the Abstract Expressionists and his early training at the Art Students' League, that Smith managed to emerge as though fully formed as an artist in his late 40s. Both through his works and his teaching, he became a huge influence on the development of art from the late 1950s until the end of the 1970s. It is a mark of the near-immediate recognition of his importance that he was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1967, and that he has enjoyed a range of retrospectives, while nearly every important museum in the United States and abroad count his works among their collections.
Tony Smith's Untitled of 1958 is a perfect example of the artist's "pictorial assertion that structure is image and that all structure is transformational" (David Smith: Architect, Painter, Sculptor, New York, 1998).citation to come). As in the artists best sculpture the forms in Untitled weave negative and positive space into an unyielding and unifying whole; as in his monumental sculpture there are moments of escape, in Untitled's case it comes in the form of a heavenly blue form intersecting with the extreme lower edge. Untitled makes it clear that Tony Smith was not only a master of form but a brilliant colorist as well.
Untitled was acquired directly from the artist in 1966; the recipient of this gift was a close colleague of Smith's and a fellow faculty member of Bennington College. The painting was gifted in exchange for the use of the owner's property for a temporary installation of Smith's monumental black painted plywood version of his Gracehoper sculpture.
Tony Smith's Untitled of 1958 is a perfect example of the artist's "pictorial assertion that structure is image and that all structure is transformational" (David Smith: Architect, Painter, Sculptor, New York, 1998).citation to come). As in the artists best sculpture the forms in Untitled weave negative and positive space into an unyielding and unifying whole; as in his monumental sculpture there are moments of escape, in Untitled's case it comes in the form of a heavenly blue form intersecting with the extreme lower edge. Untitled makes it clear that Tony Smith was not only a master of form but a brilliant colorist as well.
Untitled was acquired directly from the artist in 1966; the recipient of this gift was a close colleague of Smith's and a fellow faculty member of Bennington College. The painting was gifted in exchange for the use of the owner's property for a temporary installation of Smith's monumental black painted plywood version of his Gracehoper sculpture.