David Smith: Follow My Path
Until 30 July at Hauser & Wirth, 32 East 69th Street, Manhattan
The show chronicles the artist’s relatively brief but prolific career with an insightful focus on his process. The exhibition has work from each decade of the artist’s active years (he died in 1965, of a car crash, aged 59). While it tracks the growth from his early periods which draw heavily on Cubist and Surrealist influences, and are more explicitly figurative through to his mature, idiosyncratic style, the show s primary focus is on granting insight into his process. It highlights the drawings, paintings, and photographs that went into the making of a David Smith sculpture. Vitrines contain studies and ephemera for the works, and certain compositions are explored again and again through two and three dimensions. The show is a masterclass in Smith’s life and work, and it’s a rare pleasure to gain such insights into a figure whose legacy is as wide reaching as his.