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Vital Line: A New York Collection
DAVID SMITH (1906-1965)
Voltri X
细节
DAVID SMITH (1906-1965)
Voltri X
signed, titled and dated 'David Smith 6/62 VOLTRI X' (on the base)
steel and paint
64 ¼ x 34 ½ x 12 in. (163.2 x 87.6 x 30.5 cm.)
Executed in 1962.
Voltri X
signed, titled and dated 'David Smith 6/62 VOLTRI X' (on the base)
steel and paint
64 ¼ x 34 ½ x 12 in. (163.2 x 87.6 x 30.5 cm.)
Executed in 1962.
来源
Estate of the artist
Marlborough Galleria d’Arte, Rome
Max and Jeanne Wasserman, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, 1966
Anon. sale; Sotheby Parke Bernet, Los Angeles, 3 February 1975, lot 37
Allan Stone Gallery, New York
Andrew Crispo, New York
Anon. sale; Sotheby’s, New York, 19 November 1997, lot 16
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Marlborough Galleria d’Arte, Rome
Max and Jeanne Wasserman, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, 1966
Anon. sale; Sotheby Parke Bernet, Los Angeles, 3 February 1975, lot 37
Allan Stone Gallery, New York
Andrew Crispo, New York
Anon. sale; Sotheby’s, New York, 19 November 1997, lot 16
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
出版
G. Caradente, Voltron, Philadelphia, 1964, pp. 34 and 43 (illustrated).
J. Jacobs, “David Smith Sculpts for Spoleto,” Art News Annual, vol. 29, 1964, p. 43 (illustrated).
David Smith 1906-1965, exh. cat., Cambridge, Harvard College, 1966, p. 79, no. 446.
B. Gold, “Smith Given Proper Setting,” Baltimore Sun, 7 August 1966, p. D24.
David Smith, exh. cat., New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1969, p. 129.
G. McCoy, ed., David Smith, New York and Washington, D.C., 1973, p. 163.
David Smith: Zeichnungen, exh. cat., Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 1976, p. 2 (illustrated).
R. Krauss, The Sculpture of David Smith: A Catalogue Raisonné, New York and London, p. 103, no. 567, fig. 567 (illustrated).
American Art at Mid-Century: The Subjects of Artists, exh. cat., Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, 1978, pp. 222 and 226 (illustrated).
David Smith, the Formative Years: Sculptures and Drawings from the 1930s and 1940s, exh. cat., Alberta, Edmonton Art Gallery, 1981, p. 21.
David Smith: Seven Major Themes, exh. cat., Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, 1982, p. 192 (illustrated).
A. Graham-Dixon, “Exorcising Private Demons : Andrew Graham-Dixon on David Smith’s Welded Sculptures,” Harpers & Queen, November 1986, p. 370 (illustrated).
K. Hilton, “Pioneer Sculptor of the Steel Age,” News Line, 5 December 1986, p. 7 (illustrated).
P. Kipphoff, “Ausstellung in Dusseldorf: 'David Smith,' Feuer und Eisen, Der Kunstler als Selfmademan und Schwerarbeiter,“ Die Zeit, 4 April 1986, n.p. (illustrated).
David Smith: Skulpturen, Zeichnungen, exh. cat., Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, 1986, pp. 2 and 15 (illustrated).
A. Graham-Dixon, "Exorcising private demons: Andrew Graham-Nixon on David Smith's welded sculptures," Harpers & Queen, November 1986, p. 368 (illustrated).
A. Marshall, “A Study of the Surfaces of David Smith’s Sculpture,” Studies in the History of Art, vol. 51, 1995, p. 97.
David Smith in Italy, exh. cat., Milan, Prada MilanoArte, 1995, pp. 1, 46 and 51 (illustrated).
David Smith, 1906-1965, exh. cat., Institut Valencià d'Art Modern, 1996, pp. 125, 127 and 129 (illustrated).
David Smith: A Centennial, exh. cat., New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2006, pp. 43 and 81 (illustrated).
David Smith: Sculptures 1933-1964, exh. cat., Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, 2006, pp. VIII and 195 (illustrated).
G. Carandente, Sculture nella città: Spoleto 1962, Spoleto, 2007, pp. 18, 21, 112-113, 138 and 165, no. 81 (illustrated).
S. Hamill, David Smith in Two Dimensions: Photography and the Matter of Sculpture, Oakland, 2015, p. 103 (illustrated).
S. J. Cooke, ed., David Smith: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Interviews, Oakland, 2018, pp. 363-364 (illustrated).
C. Lyon, ed., David Smith Sculpture: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1932-1965, Volume Three, 1954-1965, New Haven and London, 2021, pp. 314-315, no. 644 (illustrated).
J. Jacobs, “David Smith Sculpts for Spoleto,” Art News Annual, vol. 29, 1964, p. 43 (illustrated).
David Smith 1906-1965, exh. cat., Cambridge, Harvard College, 1966, p. 79, no. 446.
B. Gold, “Smith Given Proper Setting,” Baltimore Sun, 7 August 1966, p. D24.
David Smith, exh. cat., New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1969, p. 129.
G. McCoy, ed., David Smith, New York and Washington, D.C., 1973, p. 163.
David Smith: Zeichnungen, exh. cat., Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 1976, p. 2 (illustrated).
R. Krauss, The Sculpture of David Smith: A Catalogue Raisonné, New York and London, p. 103, no. 567, fig. 567 (illustrated).
American Art at Mid-Century: The Subjects of Artists, exh. cat., Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, 1978, pp. 222 and 226 (illustrated).
David Smith, the Formative Years: Sculptures and Drawings from the 1930s and 1940s, exh. cat., Alberta, Edmonton Art Gallery, 1981, p. 21.
David Smith: Seven Major Themes, exh. cat., Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, 1982, p. 192 (illustrated).
A. Graham-Dixon, “Exorcising Private Demons : Andrew Graham-Dixon on David Smith’s Welded Sculptures,” Harpers & Queen, November 1986, p. 370 (illustrated).
K. Hilton, “Pioneer Sculptor of the Steel Age,” News Line, 5 December 1986, p. 7 (illustrated).
P. Kipphoff, “Ausstellung in Dusseldorf: 'David Smith,' Feuer und Eisen, Der Kunstler als Selfmademan und Schwerarbeiter,“ Die Zeit, 4 April 1986, n.p. (illustrated).
David Smith: Skulpturen, Zeichnungen, exh. cat., Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, 1986, pp. 2 and 15 (illustrated).
A. Graham-Dixon, "Exorcising private demons: Andrew Graham-Nixon on David Smith's welded sculptures," Harpers & Queen, November 1986, p. 368 (illustrated).
A. Marshall, “A Study of the Surfaces of David Smith’s Sculpture,” Studies in the History of Art, vol. 51, 1995, p. 97.
David Smith in Italy, exh. cat., Milan, Prada MilanoArte, 1995, pp. 1, 46 and 51 (illustrated).
David Smith, 1906-1965, exh. cat., Institut Valencià d'Art Modern, 1996, pp. 125, 127 and 129 (illustrated).
David Smith: A Centennial, exh. cat., New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2006, pp. 43 and 81 (illustrated).
David Smith: Sculptures 1933-1964, exh. cat., Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, 2006, pp. VIII and 195 (illustrated).
G. Carandente, Sculture nella città: Spoleto 1962, Spoleto, 2007, pp. 18, 21, 112-113, 138 and 165, no. 81 (illustrated).
S. Hamill, David Smith in Two Dimensions: Photography and the Matter of Sculpture, Oakland, 2015, p. 103 (illustrated).
S. J. Cooke, ed., David Smith: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Interviews, Oakland, 2018, pp. 363-364 (illustrated).
C. Lyon, ed., David Smith Sculpture: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1932-1965, Volume Three, 1954-1965, New Haven and London, 2021, pp. 314-315, no. 644 (illustrated).
展览
Spoleto, Festival of Two Worlds, Sculpture in the City, June-Fall 1962.
New York, Andrew Crispo Gallery, Three Dimensions in Sculpture: Metal, Wood and Stone: Rodin, Brancusi, Matisse, Moore, Noguchi, Serra, Smith and Wilmarth, 1977, no. 22.
Mountainville, Storm King Art Center, Drawings and Sculptures: Noguchi, Calder, and Smith, May-October 1979.
New York, Marisa del Re Gallery, Sculptures and Their Related Drawings, March-April 1981, p. 24 (illustrated).
New York, Marisa del Re Gallery, Found Objects, July 1983, no. 14.
New York, Andrew Crispo Gallery, Three Dimensions in Sculpture: Metal, Wood and Stone: Rodin, Brancusi, Matisse, Moore, Noguchi, Serra, Smith and Wilmarth, 1977, no. 22.
Mountainville, Storm King Art Center, Drawings and Sculptures: Noguchi, Calder, and Smith, May-October 1979.
New York, Marisa del Re Gallery, Sculptures and Their Related Drawings, March-April 1981, p. 24 (illustrated).
New York, Marisa del Re Gallery, Found Objects, July 1983, no. 14.
更多详情
One of the most influential and innovative sculptors of the twentieth century, David Smith transformed and revitalized the traditional genre of sculpture in postwar America. Working with industrial materials and an expressive vernacular informed by Picasso’s Cubist sculpture, Smith translated the pictorial language of Abstract Expressionism into three dimensions. Executed in the late spring of 1962 in the small Italian town of Voltri, the eponymous series ranks among the most legendary and well-known of his career. The tenth example from this series of twenty-two sculptures, Voltri X is one of the most important and widely discussed of the group; it is also the only example to have been painted, in this case displaying the subtle warm burnish imparted by the artist’s use of red paint.
David Smith’s ingenious flair for the expressive capacity of raw, industrial materials reached new levels of expression and ingenuity with works such as the present example. In Voltri X, he has created a totemic sculpture that is comprised of a circular metal disc, which rests upon a thin rectangular base and is then topped by two metal pieces attached end-to-end, and linked by metal rings. The artist used discarded pieces of raw steel from a nearby factory, which to this day retain a beautiful and expressive raw veneer. Circular elements repeat in interesting and witty ways in this example, with each element having been punched with a round hole, and the two smaller pieces connected by twin rings. As an artist who largely intuited the expressive power of abstract forms, David Smith understood circles to be both symbolic and elemental, representing “the first wheel of man,” as he said, which was all the more insightful given his proximity, at the time, to ancient Roman civilization (D. Smith, quoted in S. Cooke, ed., David Smith: Collected Writings, Lectures and Interviews, Oakland, 2018, p. 363).
In 1962, Smith was invited by the Italian government to participate in the fourth annual “Festival of Two Worlds,” which at that time was a new art and music festival designed to bring together European and American artists. The national Italian steel conglomerate offered Smith the choice of five abandoned welding factories near Genoa, and he selected the one in Voltri. Although he initially proposed to work in stainless steel, Smith immediately reversed his thinking when he arrived in Voltri, where he discovered a surfeit of raw materials. The discarded tools and scraps of steel he found lying abandoned at the factory proved to be exciting and full of potential (he was especially drawn to the large-scale pieces of sheet metal that had been run through an industrial press, which he called “chopped clouds"). Looking back on his time in Voltri, Smith later described it as “the greatest and most prolific of my life” (D. Smith, quoted in M. Brenson, David Smith: The Art and Life of a Transformational Sculptor, New York, 2022, p. 577). In a 1962 letter to curator David Sylvester, Smith wrote "I never made so much—so good—so easy in such a condensed time as in my 30 day Italian phase."
Although he originally studied painting and drawing at the Art Students League in New York in the late 1920s, it was sculpture with which the artist found a natural affinity. His first sculptural works would emerge in the early 1930s. At that time, he began to create reliefs from found objects like coral, bones, wood and wire. Around this same time, the artist John Graham had shown Smith some pictures of welded metal sculptures by Julio Gonzáles and Pablo Picasso. The idea of industrial metal as sculptural material seemed perfectly suited to the young artist, as he had worked as a riveter and welder in an automobile plant in previous summers. In 1933, his first welded sculptures emerged, which led to the important series known as the “Agricola," which appeared to have been “drawn” in mid-air and had the same frontally-aligned vantage point as that of painting.
Although he was initially commissioned to make only two sculptures, Smith created twenty-seven sculptures while in Voltri, in what proved to be an unprecedented burst of creativity that spanned the course of thirty days. Eighteen of the Voltri – including Voltri X – were later installed on the steps of the Roman amphitheater in Spoleto, which proved to be especially poignant as the sun set over the Tuscan hills. “A more beautiful setting I could not conceive” the artist would later remark (D. Smith, quoted in S. Cooke, ed., op. cit., p. 362). Indeed, the Voltri seemed to stand sentinel as new beacons of an industrial age that were indelibly linked to past civilization.
“Other than in Smith's own work, there is no sculptural precedent for the Voltris,” Smith’s recent biographer, Michael Brenson, has written. “The speed of their formation and invention is astonishing. They seem to have emerged not just as physical presences but also as afterimages” (M. Brenson, op. cit., p. 572). Indeed, the Voltri series is special within the artist’s oeuvre – with Voltri X an emblematic example – as they demonstrate Smith’s flair for marrying the expressive quality of the raw steel with the symbolic quality of abstraction. Using the materials of the postwar world, and yet inspired by his ancient Roman surroundings, Smith created a new hybrid, in which the direct manipulation of the raw steel was used in exciting and improvisatory ways.
David Smith’s ingenious flair for the expressive capacity of raw, industrial materials reached new levels of expression and ingenuity with works such as the present example. In Voltri X, he has created a totemic sculpture that is comprised of a circular metal disc, which rests upon a thin rectangular base and is then topped by two metal pieces attached end-to-end, and linked by metal rings. The artist used discarded pieces of raw steel from a nearby factory, which to this day retain a beautiful and expressive raw veneer. Circular elements repeat in interesting and witty ways in this example, with each element having been punched with a round hole, and the two smaller pieces connected by twin rings. As an artist who largely intuited the expressive power of abstract forms, David Smith understood circles to be both symbolic and elemental, representing “the first wheel of man,” as he said, which was all the more insightful given his proximity, at the time, to ancient Roman civilization (D. Smith, quoted in S. Cooke, ed., David Smith: Collected Writings, Lectures and Interviews, Oakland, 2018, p. 363).
In 1962, Smith was invited by the Italian government to participate in the fourth annual “Festival of Two Worlds,” which at that time was a new art and music festival designed to bring together European and American artists. The national Italian steel conglomerate offered Smith the choice of five abandoned welding factories near Genoa, and he selected the one in Voltri. Although he initially proposed to work in stainless steel, Smith immediately reversed his thinking when he arrived in Voltri, where he discovered a surfeit of raw materials. The discarded tools and scraps of steel he found lying abandoned at the factory proved to be exciting and full of potential (he was especially drawn to the large-scale pieces of sheet metal that had been run through an industrial press, which he called “chopped clouds"). Looking back on his time in Voltri, Smith later described it as “the greatest and most prolific of my life” (D. Smith, quoted in M. Brenson, David Smith: The Art and Life of a Transformational Sculptor, New York, 2022, p. 577). In a 1962 letter to curator David Sylvester, Smith wrote "I never made so much—so good—so easy in such a condensed time as in my 30 day Italian phase."
Although he originally studied painting and drawing at the Art Students League in New York in the late 1920s, it was sculpture with which the artist found a natural affinity. His first sculptural works would emerge in the early 1930s. At that time, he began to create reliefs from found objects like coral, bones, wood and wire. Around this same time, the artist John Graham had shown Smith some pictures of welded metal sculptures by Julio Gonzáles and Pablo Picasso. The idea of industrial metal as sculptural material seemed perfectly suited to the young artist, as he had worked as a riveter and welder in an automobile plant in previous summers. In 1933, his first welded sculptures emerged, which led to the important series known as the “Agricola," which appeared to have been “drawn” in mid-air and had the same frontally-aligned vantage point as that of painting.
Although he was initially commissioned to make only two sculptures, Smith created twenty-seven sculptures while in Voltri, in what proved to be an unprecedented burst of creativity that spanned the course of thirty days. Eighteen of the Voltri – including Voltri X – were later installed on the steps of the Roman amphitheater in Spoleto, which proved to be especially poignant as the sun set over the Tuscan hills. “A more beautiful setting I could not conceive” the artist would later remark (D. Smith, quoted in S. Cooke, ed., op. cit., p. 362). Indeed, the Voltri seemed to stand sentinel as new beacons of an industrial age that were indelibly linked to past civilization.
“Other than in Smith's own work, there is no sculptural precedent for the Voltris,” Smith’s recent biographer, Michael Brenson, has written. “The speed of their formation and invention is astonishing. They seem to have emerged not just as physical presences but also as afterimages” (M. Brenson, op. cit., p. 572). Indeed, the Voltri series is special within the artist’s oeuvre – with Voltri X an emblematic example – as they demonstrate Smith’s flair for marrying the expressive quality of the raw steel with the symbolic quality of abstraction. Using the materials of the postwar world, and yet inspired by his ancient Roman surroundings, Smith created a new hybrid, in which the direct manipulation of the raw steel was used in exciting and improvisatory ways.
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