Tony Smith: Source, Tau, Throwback

Tony Smith: Source, Tau, Throwback

510 W. 25th Street New York, NY 10022, USA Friday, April 26, 2019–Saturday, June 22, 2019


 Pace Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition by renowned artist Tony Smith (1912 – 1980) since his estate joined the gallery in 2017. The exhibition showcases three of Smith’s monumental sculptures, Source, Tau, and Throwback. The three works encapsulate Smith’s practice as a sculptor with his focus on basic form while exploring geometric abstraction. To accompany the exhibition, Pace will publish a full-color catalogue with a new essay by Christopher Ketcham. 

 Tony Smith (b. 1912, South Orange, New Jersey; d. 1980, New York) considered his process to be intuitive, his work resting close to the unconscious and exploring themes of spirituality and presence in a synthesis of geometric abstraction and expressionism. He studied painting at the Art Students League, New York (1934–36) and attended the New Bauhaus, Chicago (1937–38), before apprenticing with Frank Lloyd Wright (1938–39). For the following two decades, he worked professionally as an architect and held teaching positions at numerous institutions in New York and Vermont. In the early 1960s, Smith turned his focus to sculpture, with his architectural background informing one of his most radical innovations—having his work industrially fabricated. Widely recognized for his large-scale, modular works produced throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Smith was included in the seminal group exhibition Primary Structures at the Jewish Museum, New York, in 1966. His profound achievements in American sculpture have been honored with retrospectives of his work at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1998); Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (2002); Menil Collection, Houston (2010); and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2017).