1959

Bronze metallic spray enamel on paper

17¹/₂ x 11¹/₂  inches

Ex-collection

Twinning Gallery, New York, NY;
Private Collection, Columbia County, New York;
Private Collection, New York, NY;
Private collection Kansas City, MO, 2008 until 2016

“I never conceived of myself as anything other than a painter because my work came right through the raised surface, and color and objects applied to the surface…Gradually the canvas became the base, and the painting was a sculpture. I have never required any separation except one element of dimension.”

– David Smith

An artist most closely associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement, David Smith created sculptures out of welded iron and steel, as well as paintings and works on paper that occupied an interesting space between the notion of two dimensional and three-dimensional form.  Smith’s oeuvre is likened to the heroic gestures of Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline, but his formal compositions and sculptures have also been compared to the lyricism and calligraphic quality of Eastern aesthetics and philosophies.

His series of Sprays, of which “A Sketch for Sculpture (Raven Series)” is one of the seminal pieces, developed out of Smith’s appropriation of iron scraps and other found elements, placing them on paper or canvas, and using an aerosol spray to outline the forms and create a negative/positive space relationship in two dimensional form.  Not only was Smith adopting a new medium (aerosol spray had just been invented in the mid-1950’s), but the artist was also experimenting with the definitive boundaries among painting, drawing and sculpture.  Further, Smith emphasized the distinctions between media by presenting sculptural material (iron and metal scraps and forms) in such a weightless and often amorphous manner.[i]

In January and February of 2008, Gagosian Gallery (New York) presented David Smith:  Sprays, which included more than seventy works on paper and canvases dating from 1958 – 1964, many of which had never been exhibited before.  The exhibition was curated by Candida Smith, the artist’s daughter, and Peter Stevens, Director of the David Smith Estate.