The American artist Tony Smith occupies an important place in the history of twentieth-century art and design. Born in 1912 in South Orange, New Jersey, he is best known for his large-scale sculptures—inventive polygonal forms made of steel, most painted black—of the 1960s and ’70s.
Yet his intellectual and creative pursuits extended well beyond sculpture to encompass architecture, drawing, painting, and writing. All of his work was informed by studies of mysticism, philosophy, mathematics, science, and literature. Shuttling among disciplines, his seemingly divergent experiments with mediums are united by interests in how individual elements may combine into a unified whole. The striving toward synthesis is evident, for example, in the sculptures, which Smith referred to as “presences.” Imposing yet undeniably enthralling, these anthropomorphic works offer spatial experiences that confront, perplex, and wholly captivate the attention of viewers.
Smith was also a committed teacher of art and design, holding faculty positions at Bennington College, The Cooper Union, Hunter College, Pratt Institute, and Princeton University, among others. He left indelible impressions on generations of students who occasionally became involved in his collaborative artistic processes. Historically, Smith straddled two artistic generations. Engaged with the New York School scene, he shared the same preoccupations with abstraction as fellow artists Helen Frankenthaler, Barnett Newman, and Jackson Pollock, while the aesthetics of Smith’s sculptures folded conveniently into the rapidly emerging discourse on Minimalism in the 1960s.
Still, neither category accurately or fully captures his practice and overall oeuvre. Smith is less reductive and more complex than the minimalist label would suggest and, in fact, aligns closer with Conceptualism than Minimalism. Ultimately, over his career, he blended the improvisational with the analytical, pushing against the formal qualities of mediums and conventional expectations for artistic disciplines, and paradoxically complicating the modernist imperative to categorize. When Smith died in 1980, he left behind a body of work that continues to elude easy classification—and whose fertile breadth remains to be fully explored.
Amaryllis (1965)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Eighty-One More (1970–71)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Louisenberg series (1953–54)
The art of the real USA, 1948–1968, 1968
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Archive: teaching. “Space and Form” (1959)
Bennington College, Vermont
“Tony Smith, Master Sculptor” (1980)
Phyllis Tuchman, Portfolio
Smug (1973), plywood mock-up
Orange, New Jersey
Bennington Structure (1961)
Bennington College, Vermont
Cigarette (1961)
Battery Park, New York, 1998
Hubris (1969), unrealized
visualization in concrete
“Talking with Tony Smith” (1966)
Samuel Wagstaff, Artforum
Untitled (1962–63)
oil on canvas, 42 x 48 in.
Vogue (1967)
Tau (1961–62)
Hunter College, New York
Tony Smith: Two Exhibitions of Sculpture (1966–67)
Smoke (1967), installation
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Smoke (1967), plywood mock-up
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Poster (1968). Accompanying Tony Smith: The Wandering Rocks (1968)
Designed by Tony Smith
Fischbach Gallery, New York
Fixture (1966), plywood mock-up, site-specific
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
Amaryllis (1965)
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
Fixture (1966), installation
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
Last (1979)
Ohio Building Authority, Cleveland, Ohio
Untitled (1962)
oil on canvas, 44 x 42 1/2 in.
Archive: sketch
Last (1979)
Stinger (1967–68), plywood mock-up
The art of the real USA, 1948–1968, 1968
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Archive: sketch
Stinger (1967–68)
Light Up (1971)
Seagram Building, New York, 1998
Light Up (1971), model
Betty Parsons Studio (1960)
perspective drawing
Betty Parsons Studio (1960)
Southold, New York
Theodoros Stamos House (1951)
East Marion, New York
Betty Parsons Studio (1960)
Southold, New York
Theodoros Stamos House (1951)
East Marion, New York
L.L. Brotherton House (1944)
Mt. Vernon, Washington
Archive: page of unpublished manuscript
The Pattern of Organic Life in America (1943–45)
L.L. Brotherton House, site plan (ca. 1944)
Mt. Vernon, Washington
Archive: page of unpublished manuscript
The Pattern of Organic Life in America (1943–45)
“Tony Smith” (2003)
Yves-Alain Bois, Artforum
Bat Cave (1969–71)
9th Mercosul Biennal, Porto Alegre (2013)
Bat Cave (1969–71)
9th Mercosul Biennal, Porto Alegre (2013)
L.L. Brotherton House (1944)
Mt. Vernon, Washington
L.L. Brotherton House (1944)
Mt. Vernon, Washington
“Old Master at the New Frontier” (1966)
Scott Burton, Art News
“Black, White and Grey” (1964)
Donald Judd, Arts Magazine
Tony Smith
Cardboard model for Bat Cave (1969)
The art of the real USA, 1948–1968 (1968)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
“Tony Smith’s Earthworks” (2008)
Joan Pachner, A Fine Regard: Essays in Honor of Kirk Varnedoe
Tony Smith
Assembling mock-ups of Spitball (1966)
Berkeley Avenue backyard, New Jersey
Gracehoper (1962)
Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
Poster (1972): Inauguration of Gracehoper (1962)
Designed by Tony Smith
Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan