Lot Essay
At the time of David Smith's tragic death in 1965 following an automobile accident, the fields surrounding his home and studio in Bolton Landing, New York, were populated with a large number of his sculptures. Documented by the artist in many now-famous photographs, his sculptures created from raw steel, stainless steel, and the monumental painted steel sculptures from the last few years of his career, were placed carefully by him so that they could be viewed from his home and studio and provide, among other things, a constant stimulus for future work.
Included in this group of works was Primo Piano I, one of three large steel sculptures created in 1962 that share the same title, each of which was painted white. Smith chose this version as the setting for a 1963 photograph of his two daughters, Rebecca and Candida, then aged nine and eight years old (see above). In a 1964 interview by Thomas B. Hess, Smith explained the source of his title for this series:
[Hess] "What about the sculptures you've entitled Primo Piano?"
[Smith] "All the action takes place on the second floor."
[Hess] "There is the base, then a pause, then the action?"
[Smith] "Yes. The title was a secondary thought, but actually, there it is. The ground floor is where the desk clerks are."
[Hess] "And the action goes on above eye level." (ed. G. McCoy, David Smith, New York 1973, p. 184).
His compositional principle of elevating 'the action' had a long history in his own work prior to 1962. Many of his sculptures contain base-like elements that appear to lift the dominant forms up from either the floor or a table-top base. In the case of Primo Piano I, a true sense of buoyancy is created by the large circles that seem nearly to float in space above the horizontal beam, as well as the lightness created by the square element tipped on one corner.
The circular form, either open as in a ring or closed as in a disc, existed in Smith's vocabulary of forms from the 1930s. It began to play a more dominant role in the 1950s as both the scale and the abstraction of his sculptures increased. During the month of June 1962 when Smith was at Voltri, his notes contain the following ideas:
Circles have long been a preoccupation, more primary than squares. Wheels are circles with mobility from the first wheel of man, to wheels on Indian stone temples, to a target on a pyramid I painted in '34 to all the suns and poetic imagery of movement to the practical fact that my sculpture is getting too big to move without built-in rolling (Smith, quoted in Krauss, 1977, op. cit., p. 99).
Throughout his career, Smith considered himself both a painter and a sculptor; he worked consistently in both mediums and applied painting concepts to his sculpture and vice versa. He made painted sculptures beginning in the 1930's and continuing until the end of his career. These painted sculptures were sometimes multi-colored and often monochromatic, as in the case of Primo Piano I. His earliest all-white sculpture dates from 1955 (see Krauss 1977, op. cit., fig. 351), a planar sheet steel sculpture dominated by cut-out circles and one square.
In the first two weeks of October 1962, just prior to creating Primo Piano I, Smith made a group of five monumental painted Circle sculptures, three of which are now in the collection of the National Gallery in Washington. Several drawings related to these sculptures show Smith exploring how to relate both rectangular planes and a long horizontal bar to the circles. (See E. A. Carmean, Jr., David Smith, National Gallery of Art, Washington 1982, p. 137). This must have been part of the thinking that led him to create the Primo Piano sculptures.
Included in this group of works was Primo Piano I, one of three large steel sculptures created in 1962 that share the same title, each of which was painted white. Smith chose this version as the setting for a 1963 photograph of his two daughters, Rebecca and Candida, then aged nine and eight years old (see above). In a 1964 interview by Thomas B. Hess, Smith explained the source of his title for this series:
[Hess] "What about the sculptures you've entitled Primo Piano?"
[Smith] "All the action takes place on the second floor."
[Hess] "There is the base, then a pause, then the action?"
[Smith] "Yes. The title was a secondary thought, but actually, there it is. The ground floor is where the desk clerks are."
[Hess] "And the action goes on above eye level." (ed. G. McCoy, David Smith, New York 1973, p. 184).
His compositional principle of elevating 'the action' had a long history in his own work prior to 1962. Many of his sculptures contain base-like elements that appear to lift the dominant forms up from either the floor or a table-top base. In the case of Primo Piano I, a true sense of buoyancy is created by the large circles that seem nearly to float in space above the horizontal beam, as well as the lightness created by the square element tipped on one corner.
The circular form, either open as in a ring or closed as in a disc, existed in Smith's vocabulary of forms from the 1930s. It began to play a more dominant role in the 1950s as both the scale and the abstraction of his sculptures increased. During the month of June 1962 when Smith was at Voltri, his notes contain the following ideas:
Circles have long been a preoccupation, more primary than squares. Wheels are circles with mobility from the first wheel of man, to wheels on Indian stone temples, to a target on a pyramid I painted in '34 to all the suns and poetic imagery of movement to the practical fact that my sculpture is getting too big to move without built-in rolling (Smith, quoted in Krauss, 1977, op. cit., p. 99).
Throughout his career, Smith considered himself both a painter and a sculptor; he worked consistently in both mediums and applied painting concepts to his sculpture and vice versa. He made painted sculptures beginning in the 1930's and continuing until the end of his career. These painted sculptures were sometimes multi-colored and often monochromatic, as in the case of Primo Piano I. His earliest all-white sculpture dates from 1955 (see Krauss 1977, op. cit., fig. 351), a planar sheet steel sculpture dominated by cut-out circles and one square.
In the first two weeks of October 1962, just prior to creating Primo Piano I, Smith made a group of five monumental painted Circle sculptures, three of which are now in the collection of the National Gallery in Washington. Several drawings related to these sculptures show Smith exploring how to relate both rectangular planes and a long horizontal bar to the circles. (See E. A. Carmean, Jr., David Smith, National Gallery of Art, Washington 1982, p. 137). This must have been part of the thinking that led him to create the Primo Piano sculptures.