Furniture Store

While chiefly known for his metal sculptures, David Smith began his artistic career as a painter and printmaker in the late 1920s, and these roots articulate themselves again several decades after he establishes himself as a master welder in New York. By 1956, Smith has defined his visual identity as a sculptor and begins experimenting with new techniques. One of these new techniques included working with stainless steel where he would first place the pieces of metal on the ground and then coat them with spray enamel and paint. He started to admire the ghost image that the enamel on the ground formed, so he began to place large canvases on the ground, allowing the sculptures he was painting to inform the composition. The result was a highly tactile “negative” of his sculptures. These spray enamel paintings were debuted in 1959 at French & Company in New York, which included the only spray paintings that were given titles, including the present work, Furniture Store, which thus marks a phase of Smith’s life as an already mature and respected artist constantly experimenting, exploring and evolving.