"Examines the development of the work of the distinguished American artist."--GoogleBooks.

David Smith is arguably the most important American sculptor of the twentieth century. From his early development out of Surrealist and Cubist influences to the towering structures he made late in life, Smith created a new language in iron and steel that embraced both symbolic figuration and pure abstraction. Forty years after his death in 1965, the body of work he created still astonishes in its variety, technical mastery, and creative energy. So powerful is Smith's legacy as a sculptor, however, that other highly important aspects of his art remain relatively neglected. Such is the case with the thousands of drawings Smith produced throughout his artistic life. David Smith: Drawing + Sculpting breaks new ground by focusing on his drawings and investigating specifically the important interactive role they played with his sculptures. It illustrates many works drawn from the extensive holdings of the artist's estate that have never been exhibited previously, and it contains the most thorough compendium published to date of David Smith's writings and statements on drawing. Smith himself stressed repeatedly the connection in his work between drawing and sculpture, noting that all of his art flowed from one continuous, evolving stream, with no "separate provision" for two-dimensional versus three-dimensional expression. Drawings tended to link to sculptures not in linear developmental sequences or one-to-one relationships, but more often as clusters or constellations of graphic themes and notations exploring ideas, forms, and motifs that also circulated through his sculptures. David Smith: Drawing + Sculpting illuminates this fundamental principle in his art.

"Summary discusses selected steel sculptures fabricated by the American painter-sculptor David Smith (1906-1965), as well as Smith's drawings and paintings. Emphasizes his investigation of concave/convex forms, and notes his use of painted surfaces. Includes essays on Smith's photography of his own works and on his surfaces and materials"--Provided by publisher.

“An essential account of America’s greatest sculptor . . . [A] magnum opus.” —Marjorie Perloff, The Times Literary Supplement The landmark biography of the inscrutable and brilliant David Smith, the greatest American sculptor of the twentieth century. David Smith, a pioneer of Abstract Expressionism, did more than any other sculptor of his era to bring the plastic arts to the forefront of the American scene. Central to his project of reimagining sculptural experience was challenging the stability of any identity or position—Smith sought out the unbounded, unbalanced, and unexpected, creating works of art that seem to undergo radical shifts as the spectator moves from one point of view to another. So groundbreaking and prolific were his contributions to American art that by the time Smith was just forty years old, Clement Greenberg was already calling him “the greatest sculptor this country has produced.” Michael Brenson’s David Smith: The Art and Life of a Transformational Sculptor is the first biography of this epochal figure. It follows Smith from his upbringing in the Midwest, to his heady early years in Manhattan, to his decision to establish a permanent studio in Bolton Landing in upstate New York, where he would create many of his most significant works—among them the Cubis, Tanktotems, and Zigs. It explores his at times tempestuous personal life, marked by marriages, divorces, and fallings-out as well as by deep friendships with fellow artists like Helen Frankenthaler and Robert Motherwell. His wife Jean Freas described him as “salty and bombastic, jumbo and featherlight, thin-skinned and Mack Truck. And many more things.” This enormous, contradictory vitality was true of his work as well. He was a bricoleur, a master welder, a painter, a photographer, and a writer, and he entranced critics and attracted admirers wherever he showed his work. With this book, Brenson has contextualized Smith for a new generation and confirmed his singular place in the history of American art.

"David Smith is judged to be the most important pioneer of a separate American movement in sculpture. He was the first to introduce welded steel, an artistic medium discovered in Europe, into twentieth-century sculpture in the New World. In his work he consiously adopted elements of Surrealism, Cubism and Constructivism movements familiar to him from a stay in Europe in 1935. In the 1950s he in turn affected the development of European welded steel sculpture, influencing such artists as Paolozzi, Luginbuhl, Tinguely, Chillida, Caro and Kricke. Until he turned to sculpture in the 1930s Smith considered himself a painter, and his drawings are among the finest products of American draughtsmanship."--BOOK JACKET.