Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park is proud to
announce the groundbreaking exhibition David Smith: The Nature of Sculpture, showcasing
the prolific and inventive work of David
Smith (1906–1965). This landmark exhibition, the first to
explore Smith's deep engagement with nature, will open on
September 23, 2024, and will be on
view through March 2, 2025.
GRAND
RAPIDS, Mich., July 10,
2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture
Park is proud to announce the groundbreaking exhibition
David Smith: The Nature of
Sculpture, showcasing the prolific and inventive work of
David Smith (1906–1965). This
landmark exhibition, the first to explore Smith's deep engagement
with nature, will open on September 23,
2024, and will be on view through March 2, 2025.
"While Smith is recognized as the most
important sculptor of the 20th century, there is much to learn
about his art and its relation to nature," says Suzanne Ramljak, VP of Collections &
Curatorial Affairs at Meijer Gardens. "We are excited to reveal
this lesser-known aspect of his career."
The art of David Smith is profuse
and marvelously inventive. Working in multiple media, formats, and
scales, he blurred boundaries between painting and sculpture and
between traditional genres such as landscape and figuration.
Smith's bountiful oeuvre has secured him a firm place within art
history and his adventurous approach to three-dimensional form has
permanently expanded the vocabulary and range of sculptural
practice.
Smith is widely hailed as the first American artist to make
welded metal sculpture and to absorb industrial methods and
materials into his creative repertoire. His inventiveness and
contributions to sculptural practice extend far beyond machine
vernacular and technique, however. Indeed, many have traced the
origins of modern sculpture parks to Smith's unprecedented outdoor
installations on his Bolton
Landing property in upstate New
York. For Smith, nature was not only a source of inspiration
but also served as studio, accomplice and staging ground for his
complex sculptural works.
"While David Smith is recognized
as the most important sculptor of the 20th century, there is still
much to be learned about his expansive art, especially as it
relates to the natural world," says exhibition curator Suzanne Ramljak, Vice President of Collections
& Curatorial Affairs at Meijer Gardens. "We are excited to
reveal this crucial and lesser-known aspect of Smith's career at
Meijer Gardens, where sculpture and nature are so intimately
bound."
David Smith: The Nature of
Sculpture will feature a selection of some 40 sculptures, alongside
related paintings, reliefs, and works on paper, providing an
in-depth exploration of Smith's sustaining connection with nature.
Uniting key loans from major lenders—including The Whitney Museum
of American Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and Storm
King Art Center—the exhibition will be arranged in loose
chronological order, beginning with Smith's earliest sculptures
from 1932 to the year before his accidental death in 1965.
Viewers will encounter nature-based work from every decade of
Smith's career, including:
- 1930s constructions with stones, shells, coral, and wood, along
with biomorphic cast metal sculptures.
- 1940s and 1950s pictorial sculpture landscapes, a genre of
Smith's own invention, which he enlisted to address an array of
themes—from autobiography, House in a Landscape and his epic Hudson
River Landscape; to color theory, Helmholtzian Landscape; to social
norms, Cloistral Landscape.
- Mid-1950s bronze reliefs depicting botanic motifs such as
Rose Garden, Wild Plums, and Skull
and Tree.
- Late 1950s and early 1960s avian sculptures, including a series
focused on ravens.
- A selection of outdoor works that find their completion in the
company of sky, wind and earth, as Smith intended.
This exhibition will have a particularly strong resonance at
Meijer Gardens, where Smith's work will be in direct dialogue with
the natural environment, including larger pieces situated out of
doors. Do not miss this eye-opening exhibition, exclusively in
Grand Rapids, and come witness
David Smith's thrilling sculptural
translations of the natural world he knew and loved.
For more information, please visit:
MeijerGardens.org/DavidSmith
Exhibition Catalogue:
David Smith: The Nature of Sculpture
will be accompanied by an exhibition catalogue co-published by
Meijer Gardens and Hirmer/University of
Chicago Press. The publication will feature contributions by
the artist's daughters, reflecting on Smith's lived domestic
experience of nature; an essay by curator Suzanne Ramljak, surveying Smith's engagement
with nature as material source, subject matter, and preferred site
for his sculpture; appreciations by contemporary artists
Beatriz Cortez and Mark di Suvero, addressing Smith's contributions
and connections to current art practice; and an illustrated
artist's chronology highlighting key nature-based events in
David Smith's life and art.
Exhibition Programming:
Unless otherwise noted, programs are included in the cost of
admission and registration is not required.
Moving Out: David Smith &
Outdoor Sculpture
Wednesday, October 9, 2–3 pm
Join Suzanne Ramljak, exhibition
curator and Vice President of Collections & Curatorial Affairs,
and Amber Oudsema, Curator of Arts
Education, on a walk to explore the lasting legacy of famed
Modernist master David Smith.
Discover his influence on sculpture parks as we know them and the
many successful artists who followed in Smith's creative
footsteps.
A full list of exhibition-related activities can be found at:
MeijerGardens.org/calendar [MeijerGardens.org/calendar __title__
MeijerGardens.org/calendar]
David Smith: The Nature of
Sculpture is made possible by:
Louis and Helen Padnos Foundation
The Meijer Foundation
Bill Padnos and Margy Kaye
Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Foundation
Botanic and Sculpture Societies of Frederik Meijer Gardens &
Sculpture Park
About David Smith
David Smith was born in 1906 in
Decatur, Indiana. He worked
briefly as a welder in an automobile factory before moving to
New York City to become an artist
in 1926. He studied painting at the Art Students league, where
Cubism and Surrealism were foundational to his practice. He began
welding sculpture around 1933 after seeing reproductions of
constructed steel sculptures by Pablo
Picasso and Julio González. He later became associated with
the abstract expressionist movement and paved the way for
minimalism with radically simplified, geometric works. Painting and
drawing remained integral to what Smith called his 'work stream'.
He embraced a holistic attitude toward artmaking and dismissed the
idea of a separation between mediums. Acknowledging the tradition
of painted sculpture throughout art history and drawing from the
bold palettes of modernism and pop culture, Smith often painted his
sculptures. In his later years, he installed his sculptures in the
fields of his home in the Adirondack Mountains, where a dialogue
between the art object and nature emerged as central to his
practice. His sculpture-filled landscape inspired Storm King Art
Center and other sculpture parks throughout the world, as well as
anticipating the land and environmental art movements. David Smith died in 1965, leaving behind an
expansive, complex, and powerful body of work that continues to
exert influence upon subsequent generations of artists.
Smith began exhibiting his work as early as 1930. His first
survey was organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1957. His sculpture was
represented by the United States
at the São Paulo Biennale in 1951 and at the Venice Biennale in
1954 and 1958. Posthumous retrospectives have been held at the
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1979 and 2006, which traveled to Tate
Modern, London and the Centre
Pompidou, Paris) and at the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art (2011, which traveled to the Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York
and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio). Other major surveys have been
organized at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía,
Madrid (1996), Storm King Art
Center (1997–99), and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK. A biography by Michael Brenson, David
Smith: The Art and Life of a Transformational Sculptor, was
published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2022.
(Biography source: Hauser & Wirth
Gallery)
About Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park
Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, one of the world's
most significant botanic and sculpture experiences, was recently
named the Top Sculpture Park in the
United States by USA
Today's "10Best Readers' Choice" and listed as the
89th-most-visited museum in the world by The Art Newspaper, the
leading global art news publication. The permanent collection
highlights hundreds of sculptures from internationally acclaimed
artists Magdalena Abakanowicz, El Anatsui, Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Mark
di Suvero, Marshall
Fredericks, Henry Moore,
Beverly Pepper, Jaume Plensa,
Auguste Rodin, Richard Serra, Yinka
Shonibare CBE and Ai Weiwei, among others. Indoor galleries
with changing sculpture exhibitions have presented shows by
Jonathan Borofsky, Edgar Degas,
Jim Dine, Richard Hunt, Cristina
Iglesias, Michele Oka Donor, George
Segal and others. The 158-acre main campus features
Michigan's largest tropical
conservatory; one of the country's largest interactive children's
gardens; arid and Victorian gardens with bronze sculptures by Edgar
Degas and Auguste Rodin; a
carnivorous plant house; outdoor gardens, including a replica
1930s-era farm garden; an 8-acre Japanese garden featuring
contemporary sculpture; and a 1,900-seat outdoor amphitheater
garden, showcasing an eclectic mix of world-renowned touring
musicians each summer. Education programs welcome 80,000 students
and guests each year. Culinary Arts & Events offerings include
weddings, corporate meetings and award-winning catering.
Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park promotes the
enjoyment, understanding, and appreciation of gardens, sculpture,
the natural environment, and the arts.
Media Contact
John VanderHaagen, Frederik
Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, 6169753180,
jvanderhaagen@meijergardens.org, www.MeijerGardens.org
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