The Addison's collection numbers over 20,000 objects. While the galleries can only accommodate a fraction of the collection, virtually the entire collection is accessible through the Museum Learning Center.

Placeholder Text

Click here to download Museum Learning Center Portfolio Guides.

Collection

Exhibitions: Currents/Crosscurrents

<<first <previous
next> last>>


View larger image
Bookmark and Share
Artist(s): David Smith (Decatur, IN, Mar 9, 1906 - May 23, 1965, Bennington, VT)
Title: Structure of Arches
Date: 1939
Dimensions: 39 5/16 in. x 48 in. x 30 1/4 in. (99.85 cm x 121.92 cm x 76.84 cm)
Medium: Steel with zinc and copper plating
Credit Line: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, Purchased as the gift of Mr. and Mrs. R. Crosby Kemper (PA 1945), 1982.162
Image Credit: ©2006 The Estate of David Smith, licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

This object is a member of the following groups (click any group name to view all objects in that group):

Exhibitions: 4 x 4
Exhibitions: Currents/Crosscurrents

Object Information

David Smith, one of America’s most important 20th century sculptors, brought his training as a painter and his experience in industrial manufacturing to a sculptural craft that has been described as “often radically abstract and uncannily anthropomorphic at the same time.” In the late ’20s in New York, where he studied painting with Jan Matulka and met artists Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, and John Xceron, Smith was introduced to Cubist and Surrealist art in European periodicals belonging to his friend, artist John Graham. Intrigued particularly by the metal sculpture of Pablo Picasso and Julio Gonzalez, Smith began to investigate three-dimensional forms. Beginning first with linear, relief-like constructions, by the late ’30s he began to work with hard metals such as steel and iron that required welding (a skill he had learned on the Studebaker assembly line in his college years) rather than carving or casting. Structure of Arches, 1939, is one of his most powerful forays into fully developed three-dimensional sculpture. Part of a small group of sculptures of the same period, Structure of Arches uses bold interplay of solids and voids, repetition of jutting angles, hard edges, and molded form to create a dynamic composition that shifts and changes in its three-dimensionality. The weathered surface, the result of the first owner’s outdoor installation of the sculpture, enhances the rugged, hand-crafted sensibility that is the hallmark of Smith’s work.

Exhibition History

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

David Smith: Sculpture and Drawings , Kunstsammlung Nordhein-Westfalen, 3/14/1986 - 1/4/1987
The Drawings of David Smith, Lamont Art Gallery, 2/5/1988 - 3/13/1988
Faculty Choice Show: Paintings, Drawings, Prints, Photographs and Sculpture from, Addison Gallery of American Art, 7/5/1988 - 7/31/1988
American Abstraction at the Addison, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/18/1991 - 7/31/1991
Arte Americana 1930-70, Lingotto, 1/8/1992 - 3/31/1992
American Abstraction from the Addison Gallery of American Art, American Federation of Arts, 2/27/1993 - 12/4/1994
Andover Alumni Collectors, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/29/1995 - 7/30/1995
Masterworks from the Permanent Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/5/1995 - 12/17/1995
Addison Gallery of American Art: 65 Years, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/13/1996 - 7/31/1996
Form and Structure: Twentieth Century Work from the Addison Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 12/28/1998 - 4/25/1999
Sculpture in Context, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/17/1999 - 7/31/1999
Edward Weston: Photography and Modernism, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 3/19/2000 - 5/28/2000
The American Avant-Garde: A Decade of Change, 1936-1946, Bruce Museum, 9/30/2000 - 12/31/2000
Art, Artists, and the Addison: Building a Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 3/30/2004 - 7/31/2004
Toward Abstraction, Addison Gallery of American Art, 12/23/2005 - 3/26/2006
Coming of Age: American Art, 1850s to 1950s, American Federation of Arts, 9/9/2006 - 9/7/2009
Inside, Outside, Upstairs, Downstairs: The Addison Anew, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/7/2010 - 3/27/2011
American Vanguards: Graham, Davis, Gorky, de Kooning and their Circle, 1927-1942, Addison Gallery of American Art, 1/29/2012 - 6/2/2013
Industrial Strength: Selections from the Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 2/1/2014 - 4/13/2014
Searching for the Real, Addison Gallery of American Art, 5/30/2015 - 7/31/2015
4 x 4, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/1/2018 - 7/31/2019
Currents/Crosscurrents: American Art, 1850–1950, Addison Gallery of American Art, 10/16/2020 - 3/7/2021

Your current search criteria is: Portfolio is "Exhibitions: Currents/Crosscurrents"