David Smith

It is a drawing line really. I would never have done that if I hadn't been interested in drawing lines. . .
—David Smith

Gagosian New York is pleased to announce an exhibition of David Smith’s Forgings, the groundbreaking series of industrially forged steel sculptures that the artist produced in 1955 and 1956. This is the ninth exhibition of Smith’s work to be presented by Gagosian in collaboration with the Estate of David Smith. Focusing on a pivotal aspect of Smith’s celebrated achievement, this is the first time that all ten 1955 Forgings have been on view together since 1956.

Smith was a pioneer of sculptural welding technique, with which he created a diverse body of work ranging from pure abstraction to evocative figurative constructions. His expansive identity, specific embrace of the modern industrial context for his art, as well as his synthesis of Modernist European influences, contributed to the broad understanding of Smith’s works as the sculptural counterpoints to Abstract Expressionist painting, and to his recognition as one of the preeminent sculptors of the twentieth century. With a particularly American combination of straightforward industry and individual expression, Smith’s Forgings give form to a crucial moment in the history of sculpture. Such works bridge the intense humanism and poetics of Alberto Giacometti and Constantin Brancusi to the industrial clarity and grandeur of Donald Judd and Richard Serra.

Smith saw drawing as the most immediate artistic expression, and he continued to paint throughout his life. In his sculpture, he took a direct approach to materials. Aligned with the painters of his time, Smith prioritized the authenticity of gesture and the visual experience of the observer. With the Forgings, he clearly and directly distilled the shared concerns of sculpture and drawing. During his time as a visiting artist at the University of Indiana, with the use of a power forge operated by LeRoy Borton at an industrial factory in Bloomington, Smith translated the spontaneity of a brushed line drawing into sculptural form, manipulating thin steel bars to achieve expressive vertical abstractions. To create the Forgings, he cut, plugged, flattened, pinched and bent each steel bar, later polishing, rusting, painting, lacquering or waxing its surface, but never compromising its vertical simplicity. The Forgings were unprecedented as works created solely through an industrial machined process, but were perhaps even more radical as pre-Minimalist forms intended to provoke discrete responses in each viewer. Each Forging is inscribed IND, alluding to Indiana, its place of origin and of Smith’s birth.