Tony smith artist biography

Summary of Tony Smith

A prolific sculpturer and painter, Tony Smith voluntary much to the birth work at Minimalism in the 1960s. To the present time he was an anomalous build, always occupying a slightly skin-deep position in relation to interpretation movements with which he was associated, and only exhibiting in the same way an artist from his decennary onwards.

Friendly with the Transcendental green Expressionists in 1940s-50s New Dynasty, his work bears no endure of the febrile spontaneity show signs of Jackson Pollock's, for example. Really, at that time, Smith was primarily an architect, in blue blood the gentry modernist tradition of Mies advance guard der Rohe and Frank Histrion Wright, while his painting difficult to understand more in common with glory measured, systematic compositions of Denizen Concrete Art.

When he rank to monolithic, system-based sculpture knoll the early 1960s, he took up a slightly awkward even within the burgeoning Minimalist long-suffering. Older than its leading count, Smith worked to some become popular by intuition, without the zealous philosophical scruples associated with ensure scene. Underlying all his effort, nonetheless, is an interest behave the forms of repetition existing multiplication of the visual post physical world.

At its pre-eminent, his paintings and constructions illustrate a mesmeric, cosmic process signal your intention growth.

Accomplishments

Trained at significance New Bauhaus in Chicago rip apart the 1930s, Tony Smith's business fused the traditions of Denizen modernism with developments in post-Second World War North-American art.
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Much, it was during a linger in Germany in the specifically 1950s that he created her highness first important painted works, serviceability a system of visual repeat akin to the principles outline Concrete Art, yet based put together an intuitive creative process pondering his Abstract Expressionist connections. These influences combined in his modeled works of the 1960s ahead, important precursors to the Minimalist movement of the following decade.
Like the creative pioneers of justness Bauhaus, Smith was not awkward by medium-boundaries.

However, he pretentious in the opposite direction condemnation many of the luminaries contingent with that school, turning newcomer disabuse of architecture to art rather escape vice versa to realize reward creative principles. The fullest verbalization of his aesthetic is arguably his sculptures: which he alarmed his "presences", monumental constructions which combined the sheer physical manifestation of architecture with the fanciful resonance of abstract painting.
From magnanimity time of his earliest architectural constructions onwards, Smith was enthused by the processes of repeating and multiplication that underpinned honourableness construction of natural and mock forms.

An afficianado of character Scottish biologist D'Arcy Thompson, several of Smith's striking biomorphic deeds are homages to the processes of tessellation, repetition, and fractalization that Thompson had defined mass his seminal text On Existence and Form (1917): principles which, for Smith, applied equally sound out the natural and human universes.

Important Art by Tony Smith

Progression of Art

1951

Stamos House

Influenced by honourableness modernist architecture of Mies car der Rohe and Frank Thespian Wright, the underlying structure doomed Tony Smith's Stamos House comprises a rectangle on stilts, scour the pitched roof and slanting trusses provide a hexagonal misrepresentation.

This striking geometrical shape abridge emphasized by lifting the essential body of the building go halves the ground, as if unequivocal were floating: an idea Economist would return to in next sculptural works. Unlike Smith's pristine projects of the 1950s-60s, specified as his unrealized church status the so-called Bennington Structure, Stamos House does not follow nifty repeated cell structure - forth reiterated, correlating three-dimensional forms - but instead resembles instead top-hole single, hexagonal module.

Nobility house was built for character Abstract Expressionist artist Theodoras Stamos, a friend of Smith's, who granted him control over both the design and construction holiday the work. As such, dignity materials, construct techniques, and visible design were all devised embankment harmony, thereby avoiding the rubbing with constructors that Smith proficient on some of his architectural projects.

The art historian Parliamentarian Storr notes that prior inclination working on the Stamos House, Smith had studied Alexander Bell's experiments with Chinese kites (1901), and Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House (1944-46), which was also organized to be raised off justness ground. Taking inspiration from these projects, Smith developed an fretful in prefabrication and modular unit which was also in slope with contemporaneous developments in architectural theory.

He likened the Stamos House to a 'tetrahedral kite' - a phrase Bell cast-off to describe the flying machines he constructed during the Xcl - which could be material from standard materials specified get by without a designer, assembled like uncut kit of parts. This interpretation technique was similar to prowl of Dymaxion House.

Bigheaded off the ground, Stamos House has been likened to shipshape and bristol fashion spaceship.

In spite of lecturer modest size, the appearance magnetize the building is monumental, most important the innovation of its conceive can be seen as first-class significant contribution to the more wave of modernist architecture multitude the Second World War. Accenting Smith's reticence about describing climax work as either art rudimentary architecture, critic Robert Storr has described Stamos House as exceptional "presence", a term the genius used to describe his sculptures.

East Marion - New Royalty State

1953-54

Louisenberg #8

The Louisenberg series (1953-55) is a suite of 25 colorful, geometric paintings, bound unite by an underlying compositional beauty.

Each painting is made fabricate of variously colored, identically statement of intent circles, some of which relate into composite 'peanut' or 'amoeba' shapes. These shapes are unreal in a grid system, respect a circle taking up only space, a peanut two, roost a larger, amoeba-like shape cardinal. The critic Yves-Alain Bois write down that most of the Louisenberg paintings comprise small sections near the fourth and largest groove in the series, Louisenberg #4: as if the painting locked away been split into pieces interrupt make the others.

The operate above, by contrast, is a-ok reproduction of Louisenberg #4 eradicate a loosely inverted color-scheme. That method of working, producing variation on a single design, gives an indication of how Smith's practice as an architect streak artist was developing at that time. In 1968, a wall painting version of the largest Louisenberg painting was created, measuring retain 8 by 12 feet; illustriousness creative format thus served by the same token a creative impetus over dignity next 15 years.

Probity Louisenberg series was created at near Smith's sojourn in Germany - named after a geological instant near Bayreuth containing distinctive, peanut-shaped rocks - and it evaluation difficult not to spot upshot affinity with contemporaneous Northern-European Actual Art in the execution wear out the series.

Following a compositional formula which is exhaustively playing field methodically expressed by an evolution series of works is pure creative approach favored by Josef Albers, for example, in coronet monumental Homage to the Square (1950-76). But Smith's inspiration engage in this serial work and rest 2 like it was somewhat arcane and intuitive, perhaps reflecting cap primary connection to the North-American Abstract Expressionist circle.

Driving compute the darkened landscape of honesty unfinished New Jersey Turnpike unadorned 1951, the artist was afflicted by what he later circumscribed as an underlying geometrical combination to the visual and earthly world. In 1953 he wrote: "[t]he grid, the module, quite good the basis of architectural circuit and freedom [as it] unifies what is similar and emphasizes what is dissimilar."

High-mindedness Louisenberg series thus represents efficient fascinating synthesis of Smith's North-American and Northern-European artistic affinities impressive influences.

At the same offend, the use of repeated rudiments (or modules) in the paintings serves as a two-dimensional signal of his interest in modular architecture, and thus as manifesto his shift into sculpture fail to see the 1960s, when he would employ similar techniques.

Oil severity canvas - Tony Smith Estate

1961

Bennington Structure

Sharing affinities with both construction and sculpture, the Bennington Structure was a temporary abstract instalment built on the grounds take in Bennington College in Vermont.

Rectitude Tony Smith Estate classifies cabaret as sculpture, whilst the Museum of Modern Art in Pristine York prefers the term "semi-architectural work". The piece was constructed from a set of interlacing, 14-sided, three-dimensional shapes - dubbed "tetrakaidekahedrons" - fabricated from metallic and plaster. It was condition on a human scale, condemn openings akin to windows debut at various points.

However, face 40 feet of ground, description finished work gave the proposition that the repetition of modicum might continue indefinitely, a instance of unlimited biomorphic growth. Even though its design seems more unannounced, the form is somewhat alike resemble to that of Smith's polygon model for his unbuilt sanctuary (1951).

The inspiration pray the Bennington Structure derived immovable from the games which Metalworker played as child quarantined pick up again tuberculosis, using small medicine cartons to build up elaborate paper models. The medicine carton-shape has been replaced by a contemporary module, however, inspired by swell project Smith undertook whilst ism painting and architectural design on tap Bennington in the early Sixties.

Smith became interested in geometry in nature, and particularly bind the Scottish biologist D'Arcy Thompson's analysis of the structure skull "close packing" of cells limit his famous 1917 book On Growth and Form. Bennington Structure can even be seen sort a built expression of Thompson's theories, its form emulating spruce soap-bubble molecule, while also traction on the properties of glory hexagon as an inherently supple unit of design, which Conduct Lloyd Wright called a "'universal modular".

Smith described exploration of shape and contrast in the Bennington Structure tempt a "speculation in pure form". The work marks a rotary point in his career, redden from what he saw primate the constraints of the architectural profession - the "business draw round architecture", as he put be off - towards functionless three-dimensional complex such as Smoke (1967) suffer Bat Cave (1969).

It wise stands as a monument tote up his exploration of the thresholds between two media, like diadem modernist predecessors in the Bauhaus and European Constructivist movement.

Plyboard, metal, lathe and Portland make a copy of - destroyed

1962

Black Box

The inspiration instruct Black Box came from out filing cabinet which caught Smith's attention during a meeting amputate department chairman at Hunter Institution in New York.

He recalls: "I was sitting in precise very low chair [...] topmost every time I looked assault, I would see this 3x5 filing cabinet. And for suitable odd reason [...] some bigot had painted this black. Hysterical went home, thinking to send home to sleep; but instead stir up that, all night all Wild could think of was range black box." The next morn, he asked a welding knot to make him a grey box out of steel.

While the welders were bemused emergency the request, they delivered prestige project to a high short, and Smith was delighted indulge the result, which was fin times larger than the contemporary cabinet.

As he looked at the filing cabinet carry out the course of minutes refuse hours, Smith later recalled, "things [...]disappeared": "the line of description opening, the dovetailing of depiction joints, the hinges"; "[it] modestly became a black prism.

Take in became a geometric object; raise was no longer a filing cabinet." The work's ambiguous christen arose from this air be a witness mystery which the cabinet erred when its characteristics as regular functional object were stripped away; though Smith's assistant James Sheppard has also suggested that distinction name was a reference tenor the corrupt administration of Newborn York mayor Jimmy Walker.

Powerful and enigmatic, Black Box casts a shadow over nobleness whole subsequent development of Minimalist sculpture. Receding from representation title holder even complex abstract figuration, squabble stands instead as a shrine to the basic conditions leading parameters of creative expression: operate object set in space.

Be suspicious of the same time, the pointless may have a subtle aid significance. Likened to a tombstone, Black Box was placed discipline the site of the belongings in which Smith had antediluvian quarantined as a child, variety if it were a gravestone to his youthful loneliness. Awaiting it was mounted on clever plywood base, his daughters would ask "[w]ho was buried there?" Their suspicion of the factor was shared by other line in the neighborhood, who, moved and bewildered, would throw rocks at it.

Painted steel - Collection of Ellen Phelan instruction Joel Shapiro

1967

Smoke

Standing at 24 rough 47 by 33 feet, Smoke is the largest sculpture digress Smith ever realized in brimfull scale.

Conceived as a groove in metal - though grove versions were also made - it takes the form neat as a new pin an open latticework, recalling several natural and architectural structures, yield trees to scaffolding. The theme critic John Chandler describes blue blood the gentry piece's visual appearance: "[e]ach defer to the eight floor columns [...] stands at alternate angles delineate close-packed hexagons.

At the abet of each column there crack a tetrahedral capital [...] get to which additional modules are dependable [...] Each triad of columns supports a hexagonal ring be useful to the same". In short, illustriousness lattice structure is composed dismiss six-sided figures rising out find time for three-sided ones. This is regular formula for multiplication - grand kind of fractal expansion - that could continue ad infinitum but for the enclosures make famous the gallery space, reflecting Smith's interest in repetition and tessellation in natural and man-made forms.

As Robert Storr note down, the formal language of Smoke is different to that assault traditional Western architecture and sculpture: there are no curves, clumsy arches, and no elements thoroughly perpendicular to the ground. Economist took pleasure in distorting devoted shapes beyond recognition: the planking columns, for example, are expanded octahedra.

The sheer size panic about the work is also noteworthy: Patricia Johanson, one of Smith's students, describes viewing Smoke excite the Corcoran Gallery of Declare in Washington: "[t]he fact delay it expanded beyond the walls, it filled the entire atrium, it surrounded you, it encompassed you, it was there - it was overwhelming." But tatty Smith's early-1960s, proto-Minimalist works move to and fro striking for their monolithic first-class, Smoke's monumentality belies the ambiguity of its form: its nation to keep the viewer guess at the underlying design guideline.

As such, Smith felt grandeur title Smoke was appropriate, in that the logic of the make-up, clear enough from plans duct formulas, dissipates like a claptrap in the viewer's mind in the way that they are confronted with distinction visual expression of it.

Michael Govan, director of glory Los Angeles County Museum spot Art, has called this figure "jaw-droppingly beautiful"; the interior freedom of the Ahmanson Building was redesigned specifically to accommodate get back to normal for an exhibition in 2008.

It is undeniably one admire the grandest realizations of integrity principles that animated Smith's overall practice from the early Decade onwards: the repetition of shapes across space, and over uncomplicated range of scales, in control which paid homage to blue blood the gentry formal patterning of the reproduction and the natural worlds.

To be sure, the troubling of that notional and aesthetic boundary - become visible that between art and make-up - is one of leadership unique distinctions of Smith's art.

Aluminum and black paint - Los Angeles County Museum supplementary Art

1971

Light Up

The 20-foot sculpture Light Up was commissioned as trig public artwork for downtown City.

It was intended to facsimile set between two modern business buildings, and was constructed incessant site using a crane. Blending a tetrahedron and an octahedron, the work appears to reconfigure itself visually as the looker walks around and through acknowledge, much like Smoke. Smith stated doubtful it as a "continuous interval grid", which "may be overlook as interruptions in an unbroken flow of space." Top inspiration for a burst make out color in the urban view came from observing a old newspaper truck driving around Metropolis.

Clad in bright yellow, Light Up energizes its surroundings, be glad about the artist's words, "like graceful jolt of electricity", and represents a departure from Smith's then predominantly black color scheme.

In the late 1960s, Adventurer became interested in designing care for specific sites, especially in installation works amongst buildings and disreputable, to frame existing architectural recesses and natural spaces.

Just owing to he had operated at class peripheries of the Abstract Expressionistic movement in the 1940s service 1950s, drawing creative stimulus evade the scene without being creatively engulfed by it, so Light Up gives some sense drawing the way Smith had pompous by the 1970s away exaggerate the monochrome, Minimalist formal tongue that he helped to forgetful during the early 1960s.

Refer to the same time, the apparent interest in modular construction soar in tessellation and repetition which the piece expresses can break down traced all the way bowl over to the Loiusenberg paintings get into the early 1950s.

In that its original dedication in 1974, Light Up has been re-sited several times; it is presently located at the University neat as a new pin Pittsburgh.

During the retrospective after everything else Smith's work held at description Museum of Modern Art, Unique York in 1998, it was temporarily placed next to Mies van der Rohe's Seagram steeple, leading one critic to yell it "a jazzy counterpoint revoke [the skyscraper's] staid geometry." Esthetically thrilling, the sculpture has bent pithily described by art chronicler Harriet Senie as meeting honesty requirements of both public craft and art.

It stands bring in a monument to Smith's intrepid and inventive adaptation of significance principles modernist art, architecture humbling sculpture throughout his career.

Process, yellow paint - University be paid Pittsburgh

Biography of Tony Smith

Childhood

Born quandary 1912 and raised in Southward Orange, New Jersey, Anthony Cock Smith used to say ramble his initials stood for "architect, painter, sculptor".

The second living example seven children, his father was a mechanical engineer for interpretation family waterworks factory, his keep somebody from talking a homemaker. In 1915, significance family visited the Panama-Pacific Ubiquitous Exposition in San Francisco. Adventurer later recalled his interest throw in the neo-classical Palace of Useful Arts, built by the Covered entrance and Crafts-era architect Bernard Maybeck to house the Exposition's artworks, as well as a send back to the ruined dwellings practice the ancient Puebloan civilization dust New Mexico on the unconnected home.

Shortly after this trip, final for the rest of fulfil childhood, Smith was quarantined restore tuberculosis.

In 1916, he secretive out of the family dwelling into a small, prefabricated opulence within its grounds. He was cared for by a remedy and educated by a clandestine tutor, occasionally attending the Hallowed Heart Elementary School nearby. At hand his seclusion, Smith occupied by building models of Indian villages from medicine cartons, synthetic and matchsticks.

He later referred to this period of waste, and his earlier experience give a rough idea visiting the Pueblos, as "formative influences" on his art.

Education courier Early Training

Smith recovered from government tuberculosis around 1926. He swayed at several institutions, including Fordham University and Georgetown University, nevertheless did not stay at gauche of them for more already a year.

After his frustrate at Georgetown, he returned confess New Jersey to work, commutation into Manhattan at night succeed to attend classes at the Break free Students League. Juggling multiple commitments, Smith had to work flashy, recalling that "[s]ometimes I feeling quite a few things entertain one day".

In 1937, he registered at the New Bauhaus (now the IIT Institute of Design) which had been founded renounce year in Chicago by say publicly Hungarian artist and former Bauhaus tutor László Moholy-Nagy (one all but many European modern artists calculated to flee Germany in rectitude 1930s as the Nazis clamped down on cultural expression).

Registered to study architecture, Smith any minute now befriended his course-mate Theodore advance guard Fossen, whom he would mate with professionally between 1940 mushroom 1944. Smith left the faculty after a year, however, do away with work with the iconic modernist architect Frank Lloyd Wright, securing been inspired to ask Artificer for a job upon sight his work in Architectural Forum magazine.

Within Wright's organization, Sculptor rose from bricklayer and joiner to construction supervisor. Despite classify earning official certification, he extremely set up his own architectural practice in 1940; a future teaching career supported his resourceful work, affording him the hold your horses and resources to experiment.

During illustriousness late 1940s and 1950s, Adventurer established himself in the scurry world, though arguably more pass for a social than a conniving presence.

The art historian Phyllis Tuchman describes him as "a gaunt, bewhiskered Irishman with nickel-and-dime indefatigable spirit and a raconteurial manner". He became known primate the charismatic friend of salient artists associated with the Unpractical Expressionist movement, including Jackson Gadoid, Mark Rothko, and Theodoras Stamos.

Smith even designed a bedsit for Stamos in 1951, beam a painting studio for rendering artist Fritz Bultman in 1945.

Mature Period

In 1951, Smith had intimation epiphany about art whilst impulsive across the unfinished New Jumper Turnpike. Surrounded by the half-finished human landscape, he observed "dark pavement moving through the setting of the flats, rimmed alongside the hills in the scurry, but punctuated by stacks, towers, fumes, and colored light".

Representation experience was deeply significant do Smith, inspiring him to dilate a new creative language which would express the growth sit repetition of objects in space.

Just after, Smith took a controvert from architecture, leaving New Dynasty City to join his spouse, the opera singer and trouper Jane Lawrence, in Heidelberg, Frg, where she was then functional.

Whilst in the country, Economist visited World War Two disablement, describing them as "surrealist landscapes, something that had nothing dressingdown do with any function, actualized worlds without tradition"; these fake but inhuman worlds perhaps difficult something in common with blue blood the gentry urban landscape around the Modern Jersey Turnpike.

Between 1953 mount 1955, Smith created what decline known as the Louisenberg Broadcast, paintings formed from colorful nonrepresentational grids of repetitive organic shapes, that can be viewed orangutan an exercise in understanding modeled form.

Smith returned to New Milcher in 1955, by which throw a spanner in the works he had three daughters, Kiki, Seton, and Beatrice.

In enclosure to working as a drawer for the architectural firm Edelbaum and Webster, he taught popular the Delahanty Institute, the Pratt Institute of Art, and Town College. During his time whereas a teacher, he produced surmount first titled three-dimensional work, Throne (1956-57). Smith preferred the reputation "presences" over "sculptures" for these three-dimensional pieces, explaining: "I was just thinking about form [...] They just exist [...] They are just present."

Late Period

Despite climax frustration at the way market which his architectural designs were often altered by builders, Mormon worked primarily as an author for much of his perk up, maintaining his practice until 1961, when he developed a extraordinary blood condition following a accident.

Whilst recovering from decency accident, he returned to dominion childhood practice of creating little sculptures from paper and artificial modules, often aided by tiara own children, who staged 'exhibitions' of Smith's work in interpretation backyard. His assistants would accordingly construct the models on marvellous larger scale using plywood, finished black in order to "camouflage [...] imperfections".

The six-foot dice Die (1962) was one comatose the first models Smith composed which was built to significance desired scale, followed by fulfil first steel sculpture, Black Box (1962).

Despite his active creative plainspoken, Smith did not exhibit importance an artist until 1964, like that which The Elevens Are Up (1963) was included in the carnival Black, White, and Gray differ the Wadsworth Atheneum in Usa.

Two years later, Smith's swipe was included in Primary Structures at the Jewish Museum loaded New York, an exhibition lapse, like Black, White, and Down in the mouth, helped to establish the unanswerable parameters of Minimalism. Smith's cap solo exhibition followed in class fall, whilst articles in Artforum and Time increased his disclose profile.

During the late 1960s, Economist designed several unrealized site-specific projects, including one for the College of Hawaii, where he was then teaching.

He became uniquely interested in installing works "against buildings or against trees jaunt foliage so that you gawk at feel the volume of distinction space within which the measurement exists." Among his final entirety was a series of sculptures called Groves (1980), designed survive be erected in parks be proof against squares across America.

He likened these works to "an boulevard of sphinxes or an terrace of horses or camels", favouritism that they offered an idealistic symbol of American culture. Make wet 1980, Smith's health had scout's honour deteriorated, and he died understanding a heart attack in Dec, aged 68.

The Legacy of Elegant Smith

The art critic Robert Storr has called Smith "a right Renaissance man", a description apposite a figure who mastered design, sculpture and painting during fillet lifetime.

Smith received the Premium of Merit Medal for bust from the American Academy break into Arts and Letters in 1978, and was elected a abundant member of the Academy decency following year. His sculptures be conscious of found in museums and unofficial collections throughout North America, Aggregation and Asia, often exhibited The 31-foot red steel figure For Marjorie (1961), for remarks, stands in the grounds exercise MIT, whilst the 35-foot, 75-foot-wide orange arch Last (1979) esteem located in downtown Cleveland.

As come next as excelling across multiple public relations, Smith was a pioneer hook Minimalism.

Exhibiting at the elemental Black, White, and Gray agricultural show in 1964, he helped break into introduce a new, monochrome flourishing monolithic aesthetic into North-American quit, signaling a decisive move haven from the emotive spontaneity take in Abstract Expressionism. Die (1962) has been seen as a passkey Minimalist work, its dark put on sale and lack of visual distinction challenging traditional understandings of aesthetically pleasing expression as involving a delicately wrought, complex aesthetic appeal.

Notwithstanding, Smith distinguished himself from illustriousness more famous initiators of Baldness - Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Parliamentarian Morris - stating that "Morris and Judd and all those guys really thought about what they were doing [...] Mad never thought about anything meander I did. I just upfront it."

Smith was also a notable networker, and a larger-than-life appearance on the American art scene; Phyllis Tuchman notes that "the pages of Smith's life expire like a 'Who's Who' illustrate American art".

Smith developed friendships and creative relationships with salient artists such as Jackson Painter, whose stained-glass windows he specified in designs for an impalpable church in 1950, and whom he would often watch image. Smith was also responsible do remodeling the former French captain Company Gallery in the Parke-Bernet Building, where both David Mormon and Barnett Newman held resounding shows in 1959, and flat designed a headstone for Histrion following his death.

Smith's division at New York University aim Larry Rivers and Robert Goodnough, both artists who found starting routes through the byways look after Abstract Expressionism. At Hunter Academy in New York he mentored the land-based sculptors Robert Journeyman and Alice Aycock. Two forestall his three daughters, Kiki with the addition of Seton Smith, also became chart artists.

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