David Smith

David Smith (March 9, 1906 - May 23, 1965) is known as the "Father" of American sculpture.  He was an abstract expressionist sculptor and painter.  

David Smith was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1950, which was renewed the following year.   As it paid out a lot of money, he made more and larger pieces and for the first time was able to afford to make whole sculptures in stainless steel.  He also began his practice of making sculptures in series, the first of which were the Agricolas of 1951-59.

Six of his sculptures were included in an exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, that travelled to Paris, Zurich, Düsseldorf, Stockholm, Helsinki and Oslo in 1953-54.  He was given a retrospective exhibition by MoMA in 1957.

Sentinel I, 1956, welded steel

"What it can do in arriving at a form economically, no other medium can do.  What associations it possesses are those of this century: power, structure, movement, progress, suspension, brutality." ~ David Smith

Metropolitan Museum of Art