Tony Smith

Drawn from a critical period of Tony Smith's career, when the artist lived in Germany from 1953-55, the Louisenberg series is named after a German geological site. Containing paintings and drawings based on an abstract grid composed of circles--some self-contained, others fused into peanut-shaped groups of two or more--the work's modular approach reflects Smith's architectural ideas and prefigures his familiar sculptural methods.

While teaching at the Pratt Institute of Art, New York and at Bennington College, Vermont in the late 50s and early 60s, Tony Smith turned his attention toward the development of a geometric language expressed through sculpture. During the same time, his most creative period, he translated this language into two dimensions, using painting as a medium for the interplay between space and form. Many of the paintings included herein have never before been published. Richard Tuttle, once an assistant to Smith, offers an insider's view into the late artist's work.

Tony Smith is primarily known as a sculptor of large abstract constructions, which he made during the last 20 years of his life. Less well known is the fact that he was also an architect and a painter--a true Renaissance man. In the mid-1930s he studied drawing, painting, and anatomy at the Arts Student League in New York, later moving to Chicago, where he took courses in architecture and design at the New Bauhaus. Subsequent work with Frank Lloyd Wright led him to establish his own architectural firm in the 40s. Becoming disheartened with the role of architect, he returned to painting, and in the late 50s found his ultimate calling in sculpture. This volume provides the first complete overview of the career of this unique figure in the postwar American artistic vanguard. Published in conjunction with a 1998 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, this book presents Smith's life and work in all mediums; thoughtful, critical essays; an illustrated chronology; a section of writings, interviews, and letters by Smith, his family, and his friends; and a selected bibliography and exhibition history.