Anthony Peter Smith (1912 –1980) was an American sculptor, visual artist, architectural designer, and a noted theorist on art. He is often cited as a pioneering figure in American Minimalist sculpture.
A prolific sculptor and painter, Tony Smith contributed much to the birth of Minimalism in the 1960s. Yet he was an anomalous figure, always occupying a slightly peripheral position in relation to the movements with which he was associated, and only exhibiting as an artist from his fifties onwards. Friendly with the Abstract Expressionists in 1940s-50s New York, his work bears no traces of the febrile spontaneity of Jackson Pollock's, for example. Indeed, at that time, Smith was primarily an architect, in the modernist tradition of Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright, while his painting had more in common with the measured, systematic compositions of European Concrete Art. When he turned to monolithic, system-based sculpture in the early 1960s, he took up a slightly awkward position within the burgeoning Minimalist collective. Older than its leading figures, Smith worked to some extent by intuition, without the earnest philosophical scruples associated with that scene. Underlying all his work, nonetheless, is an interest in the forms of repetition and multiplication of the visual and physical world. At its best, his paintings and constructions embody a mesmeric, cosmic process of growth.
Tony Smith was trained at the New Bauhaus in Chicago in the 1930s, his work fused the traditions of European modernism with developments in post-Second World War North-American art. Significantly, it was during a stay in Germany in the early 1950s that he created his first important painted works, using a system of visual repetition akin to the principles of Concrete Art, yet based on an intuitive creative process reflecting his Abstract Expressionist connections. These influences combined in his sculptural works of the 1960s onwards, important precursors to the Minimalist movement of the following decade.
Like the creative pioneers of the Bauhaus, Smith was not constrained by medium-boundaries. However, he moved in the opposite direction to many of the luminaries associated with that school, turning from architecture to art rather than vice versa to realize his creative principles. The fullest expression of his aesthetic is arguably his sculptures: which he called his "presences", monumental constructions which combined the sheer physical presence of architecture with the conceptual resonance of abstract painting.
From the time of his earliest architectural constructions onwards, Smith was enthused by the processes of repetition and multiplication that underpinned the construction of natural and man-made forms.
© 2019. All images are copyrighted © by Tony Smith Estate. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained.
A prolific sculptor and painter, Tony Smith contributed much to the birth of Minimalism in the 1960s. Yet he was an anomalous figure, always occupying a slightly peripheral position in relation to the movements with which he was associated, and only exhibiting as an artist from his fifties onwards. Friendly with the Abstract Expressionists in 1940s-50s New York, his work bears no traces of the febrile spontaneity of Jackson Pollock's, for example. Indeed, at that time, Smith was primarily an architect, in the modernist tradition of Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright, while his painting had more in common with the measured, systematic compositions of European Concrete Art. When he turned to monolithic, system-based sculpture in the early 1960s, he took up a slightly awkward position within the burgeoning Minimalist collective. Older than its leading figures, Smith worked to some extent by intuition, without the earnest philosophical scruples associated with that scene. Underlying all his work, nonetheless, is an interest in the forms of repetition and multiplication of the visual and physical world. At its best, his paintings and constructions embody a mesmeric, cosmic process of growth.
Tony Smith was trained at the New Bauhaus in Chicago in the 1930s, his work fused the traditions of European modernism with developments in post-Second World War North-American art. Significantly, it was during a stay in Germany in the early 1950s that he created his first important painted works, using a system of visual repetition akin to the principles of Concrete Art, yet based on an intuitive creative process reflecting his Abstract Expressionist connections. These influences combined in his sculptural works of the 1960s onwards, important precursors to the Minimalist movement of the following decade.
Like the creative pioneers of the Bauhaus, Smith was not constrained by medium-boundaries. However, he moved in the opposite direction to many of the luminaries associated with that school, turning from architecture to art rather than vice versa to realize his creative principles. The fullest expression of his aesthetic is arguably his sculptures: which he called his "presences", monumental constructions which combined the sheer physical presence of architecture with the conceptual resonance of abstract painting.
From the time of his earliest architectural constructions onwards, Smith was enthused by the processes of repetition and multiplication that underpinned the construction of natural and man-made forms.
© 2019. All images are copyrighted © by Tony Smith Estate. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained.
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| Mr Tony Smith |
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| 1954, Unknown |
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| 1956-57, Throne |
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| 1960-82, Cross |
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| 1961, For Marjorie |
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| 1961, Light Box |
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| 1961, Marriage |
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| 1961, Spitball |
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| 1961-62, Tau |
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| 1962, Beardwig |
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| 1962, Free Ride |
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| 1962, Playground |
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| 1962, Ring cross |
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| 1962, The Snake Is Out |
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| 1962, We Lost |
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| 1962, Willy |
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| 1962-68, Cigarette |
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| 1963, Mistake |
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| 1964, Beardwig Sculpture |
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| 1964, Moondog |
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| 1965, Amaryllis |
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| 1965, The Keys to Given! |
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| 1967, Source |
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| 1967, Dial |
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| 1967, Maze |
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| 1967, Smoke |
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| 1967, Source construction |
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| 1967, Source |
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| 1967-68, Stinger, Olympic sculpture park, Seattle |
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| 1968, Arch |
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| 1968, Arm |
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| 1968, Asteriskos |
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| 1968, Equinox |
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| 1968, Moses |
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| 1969, For D.C. |
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| 1969, For J.C. |
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| 1969, For P.N. |
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| 1969-70, Smog |
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| 1970, Bat cave |
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| 1970, Bat cave |
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| 1970, Bees do it |
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| 1970, Moebius Strip |
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| 1970-71, Eighty One More |
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| 1971, Yellowbird |
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| 1971-72, He who must be obeyed |
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| 1972, Gracehoper |
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| 1973, Fermi |
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| 1973, Smug |
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| 1973-74, For Dolores |
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| 1974, The fourth sign |
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| 1976, Lipizzaner |
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| 1976, One-Two-Three |
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| 1976-79, Throwback |
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| Painting, 1948, Untitled |
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| Painting, 1948, Untitled II |
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| Painting, 1958, Untitled |
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| Painting, 1960, Generation |
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| Painting, 1960, Untitled |
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