David Smith

The Artist
Eugene Von Stanley, Trenton, New Jersey (acquired from the above)
Mary Agabiti, Seattle
Christie's, New York, May 16, 1980, Lot 13 (consigned by the above)
Acquired by the present owner from the above

New York, Kootz Gallery, David Smith, New Sculpture, January - February 1953, cat. no. 5, not illustrated

Herman Cherry, "David Smith," Numero, v. 5, May - June 1953, p. 20, illustrated 
Clement Greenberg, "David Smith," Art in America, v. 44, no. 4, Winter 1956-1957, p. 31, illustrated 
Hilton Kramer, "The Sculpture of David Smith," Arts, v. 34, February 1960, p. 38, illustrated 
Clement Greenberg, "David Smith," Art in America, v. 51, no. 4, August 1963, p. 115, illustrated
Exh. Cat., Cambridge, Fogg Art Museum (and travelling), David Smith 1906-1965: A retrospective exhibition, 1966, cat. no. 217, p. 73 (checklist)
Rosalind Krauss, The Sculpture of David Smith: A Catalogue Raisonné, New York and London, 1977, cat. no. 270, illustrated and p. 56 (text)
Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, David Smith: Seven Major Themes, 1982, fig. 6, p. 77, illustrated and pp. 76-77 (text)
Michael Bandler, "David Smith: Man and Artist of Steel," Artscene USA, 1983
Exh. Cat., Miami, Museum of Contemporary Art, David Smith: Stop/Action, 1998, p. 4 (text) 
Exh. Cat., New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, David Smith: A Centennial, 2006, p. 76 (text) 
The Martin Z. Margulies Collection: Painting and Sculpture, Miami, 2008, p. 284, illustrated in color and p. 30, illustrated in color (in installation)

Poignantly levitating above the earth in a dazzling tableau of chiseled light and air, David Smith’s Agricola VI from 1952 is a radiant and bold exemplar from Smith’s extraordinary series of Agricola sculptures. Smith’s profound body of work independently expanded the realm of sculptural possibility, challenged the boundaries of three dimensions, and propelled modernist sculpture toward previously uncharted formal territories. Casting an extraordinary silhouette bristling with irrepressible energy and movement, the interconnected found elements of Agricola VI thrillingly conflate Duchampian modes of conceptual thought with the most advanced formal understanding of abstract line and spatial organization. In its remarkable geometry and draftsman-like form, Agricola VI further transcends distinctions between mediums as a groundbreaking paragon of post-war abstraction.

Agricola is a Latin term that translates to “farmer;” in Smith’s eponymous series, the primary components are fittingly discarded pieces of farm machinery. Smith described his affinity for his chosen material in a 1959 interview: “The Agricola series are like new unities whose parts are related to past tools of agriculture. Forms in function are often not appreciated in their context except for their mechanical performance. With time and the passing of their function and a separation of their past, metaphoric changes can take place permitting a new unity, one that is strictly visual.” (the artist cited in Rosalind E. Krauss, The Sculpture of David Smith: a Catalogue Raisonné, New York and London, 1977, p. 54-55) Smith turned to these everyday materials, at first, for their accessibility—his financial restrictions catalyzed an unbridled spurt of creativity and innovation in the Agricolas that preceded his usage of the more expensive steel later employed for his Cubi sculptures. For the artist, materials were of the utmost significance, as the symbolic associations of industrial machine metals such as iron and steel evoked the speed, technology, and progress of modern society. Thus, the work of the artist is to initiate an elevating exchange, whereby the original utility of the individual components is surrendered in light of a new formal construction. Agricola VI is a superb realization of this process, particularly dynamic in its numerous interlocking parts arranged in an active thrust. Here, the components are welded together to create the impression of a running figure, frozen in motion like the frame of a Muybridge photograph or the striding single figures of ancient Greek vase painting. Though the motif of the abstract kinetic figure recurs throughout Smith’s work, it is nowhere as articulate and compelling as in Agricola VI. A long vertical limb is planted firmly in the center, with the second curving out and trailing behind, punctuated at the end by a bolt-like fragment representative of a foot. The upper torso of the figure is modeled by a network of interconnected parts with an open, rounded head and an outstretched arm-like rod balancing the trailing leg. The associative, representational content of Smith’s abstract drawing in space is here made legible by the elongated figure framed in the half-moon arc stretching out from the base. Paul Hayes Tucker noted that when Smith compiled and labeled photographs from the series, he scribbled a reference to the present work as ‘lemon squeeze’: “a humorous reference, perhaps, to the elongated figure running on what might be seen as the lower section of a clock, literally and figuratively in a squeeze.” (Paul Hayes Tucker, ‘Family Matters: David Smith’s Series Sculptures’ in Exh. Cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (and travelling), David Smith: A Centennial, 2006, p. 76)

In the present work, the linear nature of the composition is equally as evocative as its physical presence, creating a fascinating dichotomy between solidity of form and openness of design. Cunningly expressing the spectacle of nature, the delicate terminations of the metal parts are cast in a new light along with other elements, whose graceful curvature or refined geometry supersedes and obscures their former function. Radically transforming the use value of the found parts of discarded machinery through reducing them to their purely formal, aesthetic, and geometric properties allowed the artist to free sculpture from the plastic arts toward a more transcendental reflexivity. The materials are thereby dematerialized, possessing a grace and purity that forms the essence of Smith’s engagement with the traditions of Modernism and developments in abstraction. Smith actively sought the connection between modern industry and the avant-garde, as he stated in a 1952 radio talk: “American machine techniques and European cubist tradition, both of this century, are accountable for the new freedom in sculpture-making. Sculpture is no longer limited to the slow carving of marble and long process of bronze. It has found new form and new method… The building up of sculpture from unit parts, the quantity to quality concept, is also an industrial concept, the basis of automobile and machine assembly in the steel process.” (David Smith quoted in Exh. Cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy, 2011, p. 26) It was in the early 1930s, upon being exposed to the welded iron innovations of Pablo Picasso and Julio González that Smith committed his artistic focus fully to sculpture. In fact, Picasso’s works were first seen by Smith in Cahiers d’Art, and as a teenager while welding in a factory in Indiana, Smith readily made a direct connection between Picasso’s metal sculptures and his own experiences: “Since I had worked in factories and made parts of automobiles and had worked on telephone lines I saw a chance to make sculpture in a tradition I was rooted in.” (Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, David Smith, 1982, p. 20) Like the Cubists before him, Agricola VI sees Smith arrange and balance linear units to construct a modular juxtaposition of forms that is abstract yet alludes to a potential figural presence. The tradition of assemblage continued through the additive process visible in the present work, as Smith’s welding of prefabricated units together in an architecture of forms similarly expands the possibility of the sculptural medium.

The years 1951-1952 marked the most radical period of the artist’s development, nearly two decades after he made his first steel sculptures; as noted, “By almost all accounts David Smith’s work of 1951 and 1952 marks the dividing line in his oeuvre, separating his sculpture into its early phase and that of its mature career... This particular material [abandoned or disused pieces of farm machinery], in turn, generated a new kind of figuration in Smith’s art, one that would remain at the core of his sculptural thinking until his death.” (E.A. Carmean, Jr., Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, David Smith, 1982, p. 69) With his mature works of the 1950s, such as Agricola VI, 1952, Smith arrived at his own artistic apex. Agricola VI belongs to the series of seventeen sculptures that defines this seminal moment in Smith’s oeuvre; this is the first series explicitly grouped and titled by the artist, thus inaugurating a method that mapped a powerful trajectory for the rest of his career, culminating in his final great series, the Cubi. The start of the 1950s saw the artist at a critical summit: Smith received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1950, was included in an important exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1951, and was United States delegate to the first São Paulo Bienal in 1951. Working contemporaneously with the painters of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism, Smith parlayed his masterful proficiency with metal into a radical and invigorating approach to sculpture. Agricola VI is abstract while still rooted in the experience of an earthly existence in both material and content, embodying Smith’s elegant command of a sculptural form whose references oscillate seamlessly between abstraction, Cubism, Surrealism, and even drawing.

The intricate geometric logic and perspectival permutations of Agricola VI reflect the genius of Smith’s sculpture to embrace seemingly contradictory ideas. The splayed frontality of the sculpture is evocative of the constructivist paintings of Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich, while its dynamic volume pushes this composition into the third dimension. Here, flatness coexists with depth and vigorous motion. The sheer angularity of the work and the interaction between its various elements mobilizes the gestural quality of Smith’s sculpture, positioning him amongst the most revered Abstract Expressionists for his evocation of drama—as Clement Greenberg wrote of Jackson Pollock’s work, Smith distills the content of his sculpture to the point at which what swells to the fore is not a picture but an event. The constantly changing effects of light and the re-interpretations possible at each angle within the sculpture mean that the figure embedded within Agricola VI is perpetually active—a crescendo of grace and motion that is resolutely never static. Throughout his career, Smith was able to channel the most radical of his avant-garde art discoveries into sculptural form, combining artistic daring with an immense skill in working with his materials. David Smith occupies a position of supreme importance among the legendary generation of American post-war artists. His elegant command of his chosen steel penetrates every tantalizing point of contact in Agricola VI, possessing a delicate synergy of poetry that accesses the emotional core of each viewer who stands before it.