David Smith, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas - Drawing and Sculpting

David Smith: Drawing and Sculpting
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas
April 16 - July 17, 2005

The Nasher Sculpture Center presents David Smith: Drawing and Sculpting. Co-organized by the Nasher Sculpture Center and the David Smith Estate, the exhibition assembles approximately fifteen seminal sculptures and seventy major drawings and paintings from the Nasher Collection, the David Smith Estate, and other public and private collections. Featuring many works that have never been publicly displayed before, the exhibition illustrates not only the range and quality of David Smith’s work as a draftsman, but also the complex ways that his drawings and paintings inform his three-dimensional work.

David Smith has long been recognized as one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. His protean career single-handedly brought new maturity and international ambition to American sculpture. Forty years after his death, his works still astonish in their variety, technical mastery and brawny creative energy. So powerful is David Smith’s legacy as a sculptor, however, that other, highly accomplished aspects of his art exist in a shadowy realm of limited acknowledgement and investigation. Such is the case with his drawings.

David Smith drew regularly throughout his career for many different reasons: to make notes, plan sculptures, jot down observations, explore graphic techniques, relax, and make beautiful, independent works of art. His vast output of works on paper provides a telling record of his visual thought and experimentation and in themselves represent a great aesthetic accomplishment. But they have never received the recognition they deserve. David Smith: Drawing and Sculpting focuses on David Smith’s history and talents as a draftsman and explore the fascinating interaction between his drawings, paintings, and sculptures. Works exhibited span from David Smith’s early development in the 1930s under the influence of European modernism to the powerful and evocative constructions in iron and steel from his maturity, and the drawings that accompanied them.

“This is one of the few exhibitions ever mounted to examine the interactions between Smith’s work in different media,” said Dr. Steve Nash, Director of the Nasher Sculpture Center. “We want to spotlight the power and beauty of Smith’s drawings and also contribute to the understanding of his working methods. It will be a pleasure and honor to exhibit in Dallas so many outstanding works by this great artist.”

Two special public programs are offered to Center guests in conjunction with the exhibition. First, a 28-minute film, David Smith: American Sculptor, 1906-1965, is showing continuously in a viewing room adjacent to the exhibition. David Smith’s ideas about art and his methods are revealed in archival footage of the artist, through reminiscences of the sculptor by his daughters, and by fellow artists Helen Frankenthaler and the late Robert Motherwell.

Secondly, on Thursday, May 5 at 7 p.m., Candida Smith, daughter of the artist and representative of The Estate of David Smith, and Peter Stevens, Executive Director of The Estate of David Smith will present illustrated lectures entitled Remembering David Smith. Following the presentations, Nash will moderate an informal discussion including audience participation.

Steve Nash and Candida Smith are co-curators for the exhibition. Both are contributing essays to the show’s catalogue, which features full-page illustrations of all works in the show, many historical photographs of David Smith and his art and studio, and a compendium of statements by Smith on drawing.

NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER
2001 Flora Street, Dallas, TX 75201
www.nashersculpturecenter.org