The “projects for sculpture” in the collection at Palazzo Collicola by American painter and sculptor David Smith (1906-1965) are unique works within the Italian museum panorama. The artist studied painting in New York, was influenced by surrealism and Picasso, starting to create abstract works with peculiar assemblages around 1930.

He would soon turn to sculpture, ending up to being among the first ones to use industrial, metal scrap, with unusual techniques such as welding, creating essentially vertical sculptures of pregnant technological symbolism. Called upon by Giovanni Carandente to take part in the Spoleto 1962. Sculptures In The City exhibition, for which he created a series of 26 sculptures entitled Voltri in the Italsider plant in Voltri (Genoa).

Increasingly emphasising the expressive power of metal, he produced a series called Cubes and Circles in steel before arriving at the surprising Zig series (after Ziggurat, to recall the monumentality of the ancient stepped towers and their verticality) in 1964, where the aggressiveness of colour is combined with the strength of the sculpture.

The three Sculpture Projects (enamels and acrylics on paper) were given by Smith to Giovanni Carandente when he visited him in 1963 in his studio in Bolton Landing, as a thank you for introducing him to the European public. They bear witness to this with special personal dedications to Carandente himself and to Spoleto, a sign of sincere affection for his friend, the critic and curator of exhibitions.

Drawing is a necessary stage in order to perform a balancing function in the impetus of the creative effort, and from these works we can see the apparent casualness with which Smith spread the metal findings on the sheet of paper in order to obtain the imprints of the coloured spittle. They do not have the appearance of preparatory sketches, but the characteristics of autonomous works due to the high expressive quality that suspends them in atmospheres where symbolic codes of Maya and Aztec culture emerge, a synthesis between archetypal figuration and references to American abstraction (Motherwell, Baziotes, Rothko).

It is worth noting the importance of having intuited the use of stencils with spray enamels since 1957, anticipating models that were later adopted by some Minimalist and Land Art artists. The order that presides over the tangles, the harmonious network of filaments, the fusion of forms always on the borderline between figuration and dreamlike evanescence is striking. Each of these works is a fragment of the sculptor’s life, a declaration of identity, mindful of Chinese calligraphy that begins on paper, continues in space and is projected beyond, allowing us to fully appreciate the development of Smith’s work in depth.

To learn more, please visit the “A tu per tu con l’arte” section of Palazzo Collicola >> https://bit.ly/3cj6H9O