DAVID SMITH

Though he initially trained as a painter at the Art Students League in New York, much of Smith’s education took place on the factory floors of automobile and locomotive plants, where he acquired a hands-on mastery of metal that would make him the first known American artist to weld steel into sculpture. Through those experiences he came to view fabricated metal parts as inherently abstract forms freed from function, waiting to be transfigured. That perspective would redefine the cultural and material possibilities of sculpture over his 33-year career.

The Sprays emerged unexpectedly from Smith’s sculpture-making. As he assembled metal components on whitewashed sections of his shop floor, his welding process left scorched silhouettes on the ground beneath. Recognizing new artistic possibility in these traces, he began arranging scraps of metal, paper and found materials on canvas, then coating the surface with commercial spray enamel—an industrial material with no precedent in fine art. He would often return to the compositions with white paint to heighten contrast and sharpen the interplay of elements.