David Smith (1906-1965)

"After my student period in painting finishing with the abstract painter Jan Matulka, my painting had turned to constructions which had risen from the canvas so high that a base was required where the canvas should be, I was now a sculptor" (D. Smith, David Smith by David Smith: Sculpture and Writings, New York, 1968. p. 68).


While completing his art studies in the early 1930s, Smith found himself transitioning to primarily working in the genre which would eventually define his oeuvre. Heavily influenced by mentors and teachers at the Art Student League who exposed him to European sculptors such as Juan Gonzlez and Pablo Picasso, Smith realized that his past experience working in factories, making automobile parts and working on telephone lines, provided him with a chance to make sculpture in a tradition he was already rooted in (Ibid, p. 25). Smiths natural affinity for manipulating industrial materials to an artistic end is evident in Dancer. A rare example of the sculptors early work, this recognizably human figure with its modeled surface and elongated, disproportionate limbs possesses an almost surrealist sensibility. Suspended mid-movement in space, Dancer is a superb example of the Smith's early innovative use of forged iron as an artistic medium.