May 16 - late fall 2000 (weather permitting)
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden
A selection of works in burnished stainless steel by David Smith (1906-1965) — considered one of the most original and influential American sculptors of his generation — will be on view beginning May 15, on the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. David Smith on the Roof will mark the third consecutive single-artist installation on the Roof Garden, a 10,000 square-foot open-air space that offers a panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline and Central Park.
Smith studied painting at the Art Students League in New York, becoming acquainted with the works of Picasso, Mondrian, Kandinsky, and the Russian Constructivists before turning to sculpture in the early 1930s. Profoundly influenced by the welded metal sculptures of Julio Gonzalez and Picasso (the latter's work seen reproduced in the journal Cahiers d'Art), Smith proceeded to create works of great originality in the 1930s and '40s, constructing compositions from steel and "found" scrap, parts of agricultural machinery, and other elements.
From the late 1950s until his untimely death in 1965, Smith produced the larger and more structural work for which he is best known, including the Sentinel and Cubi series. Although monumental and intended to be seen in the open, these later works — planes, boxes, and cylinders of polished metal — possess a dynamic quality that animates their sense of density.
The installation on the Roof Garden will comprise a selection of Smith's late works, primarily from the Cubi series but also including Sentinel V (1959), from the collection of Rebecca and Candida Smith, the artist's daughters, as well as the Metropolitan Museum's Becca (1965).
David Smith on the Roof will be coordinated by Nan Rosenthal, Consultant, and Anne L. Strauss, Research Associate, in the Department of Modern Art.
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November 10, 1999
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