David Smith
dal 14/7/2004 al 26/9/2004
Segnalato da
14/7/2004
David Smith
IVAM Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia
Drawings by the American sculptor David Smith, together with a selection of six sculptures and five Medals for Dishonor created by the artist between 1937 and 1924. The exhibition presents a hundred drawings by David Smith, almost all executed during the fifties, which not only introduce us to the method of working used by the artist but also reveal to us the constant interaction between different disciplines in his work as a whole.
The Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM) is presenting drawings by the American sculptor David Smith, together with a selection of six sculptures and five Medals for Dishonor created by the artist between 1937 and 1924, from 15 July to 26 September 2004, for the first time in Spain.
The curator of the exhibition, Alain Kirili, has presented a dialogue between David Smith's drawings and his sculptures which will help us to arrive at a better understanding of the creative process of this artist, who contributed to the assimilation and international diffusion of the legacy of Julio González at a time when the work of the Catalan sculptor was not generally known.
The exhibition presents a hundred drawings by David Smith, almost all executed during the fifties, which not only introduce us to the method of working used by the artist but also reveal to us the constant interaction between different disciplines in his work as a whole.
David Smith's drawings can be classified into various groups in this exhibition. First of all, line drawings, which include the sketches for the Medals for Dishonor produced between 1937 and 1942, the first works made as a series by this artist. In these medals, which denounce the injustices and dehumanisation of politics, we can see the surrealistic imagination of Pieter Brueghel and the irony of Goya.
The second group is the drawings that use flows of ink. In the fifties David Smith played with a wide range of technical possibilities in his drawings, using different kinds of paper and experimenting with pigments that he made himself. The result of combining these ingredients was the development of a series of drawings with calligraphic forms which occasionally shift towards the use of the human figure or the delineation of landscapes.
In the period from the mid-fifties to two years before his death in 1965, Smith produced the spray drawings that he called "think pieces". On the floor, which had first been painted white, he arranged pieces to form his sculptures. He transferred this method to a paper support and then applied spray paint of various colours to the support and the pieces of the sculpture. When he removed the objects from their positions, the marks left by their shapes were like sculptural forms in a dialogue with their natural surroundings.
Lastly, there are his nudes, now presented for the first time and ranging from drawings done in the thirties to paintings of nudes produced in his last years (1963–1965). These latter works, which were created in parallel with the series of stainless steel Cubi sculptures, are treated extensively by Kirili in his essay "David Smith: the cult of the solar nude". This essay is accompanied by the first publication of the photographs of nudes that David Smith used for his work, thanks to the generosity of the artist's daughters, Rebecca and Candida.
The catalogue that accompanies the exhibition presents the works exhibited, photographs of David Smith and the places connected with him, and fragments of his own writings. It also includes essays by the specialists Kosme de Barañano, Candida Smith and Alain Kirili, the curator of the exhibition.
IVAM
Guillem de Castro, 118
Valencia