TONY SMITH

On view from July 14 to August 19, the show will offer a unique opportunity for viewers to experience Smith’s monumental works, highlighting the evolution of the artist’s sculptural practice during the 1960s and 1970s.

Though he would become widely known for his sculpture, Smith began his career as an architect, working with Frank Lloyd Wright on Usonian homes and other projects in the late 1930s. The artist was an independent architectural designer from the early 1940s through the 1950s, crossing over into sculpture in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Smith often drew inspiration for his dynamic geometric abstractions from phenomena in the natural world. Through his artworks, Smith investigated the formal possibilities of crystalline structures, including octahedrons and tetrahedrons. Embracing the imaginative effects of chance and chaos, the artist produced sculptures that forged a new language of abstraction amid the rise of Minimalism. Deeply engaged with architecture, science, mathematics, and philosophy, Smith’s works propose new modes of understanding and experiencing their surrounding environments. Pace maintained a long relationship with Smith during his lifetime, and it began representing the Tony Smith Estate in 2017.

The gallery’s focused presentation in New York this summer will spotlight three of the artist’s large-scale, black-painted steel sculptures: Wall (1964), New Piece (1966), and One-Two-Three, A.P. (1976). Inhabiting non-linear planes of space, these sculptures are meant to be experienced from a wide range of perspectives. As viewers move around Smith’s shapeshifting works—which speak to the complex relationships between sculpture, the body, and the environment—new forms and meanings are revealed. Together, Wall, New Piece, and One-Two-Three, A.P. reflect Smith’s ability to imbue his lyrical abstractions with spiritual import.