Details

Title

The Keys to Given!

Artist/Maker

Tony Smith (American, 1912–1980)

Date

1965/2000

Medium

Painted steel

Dimensions

96 x 96 x 96 inches 3500 pounds

Credit

Gift of Jane Smith

Accession #

2003.125

On View

Currently not on view

A unique figure in postwar American art, Tony Smith is primarily known for his large, abstract sculptures, which he made during the last 20 years of his life. At its core, Smith's work attempts to propose an underlying universal structure of the physical world. Influenced early on by reading naturalist D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form (1917) pertaining to geometric form found in nature and Jay Hambridge's Dynamic Symmetry analyzing the Golden Section as a link between natural forms and ideal geometry, Smith's architecture, painting, and sculpture explore both biomorphic and geometric form as the essence of materiality.

Image Copyright

© Estate of Tony Smith/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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