Tony Smith: Wall

The central work of this exhibition is the monumental  ‘Wall’ from 1964, an 18-foot long monolith, accompanied by two other major works: ‘The Keys To. Given!’, 1965, and ‘Seed’ 1968. These are three of Tony Smith’s most influential sculptures, fabricated in the artist’s signature black painted steel. It will be the first opportunity for Tony Smith’s full-scale sculptures to be seen in the UK.
 
Born in New Jersey in 1912, the same year as close friend Jackson Pollock, Tony Smith is one of the most original and influential figures in American art; as architect, sculptor, painter and theoretician.
 
Tony Smith first began to exhibit his sculpture in 1964, in some of the most pivotal exhibitions of the Minimalist movement in the USA. These works anticipate Minimal Art, and were hugely influential in the development of Minimalism, but also stand apart.
 
Smith’s art was developed from interests that began as an architect working under Frank Lloyd Wright, and his theories formulated since the 1930s with his Abstract Expressionist friends Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman.
 
The sculptures are based on modular building systems and complex formulations based on axial symmetry. ‘The Keys To. Given!’, 1965, began as a plan for a house. But these works are not about architecture; they are about void and mass. ‘They may be seen as interruptions in an otherwise unbroken flow of space. If you think of space as solid, they are voids in that space.’
 
The fetishist light-absorbing black patina of Smith’s most well-known sculptures has a Gothic sensibility: ‘They are black and probably malignant’. Their suggestive titles allude to figuration and meaning.