David Smith (1906-1965) was an American sculptor associated with Abstract Expressionism, who brought the methods of painting into metal sculpture. His work matters because it placed welded steel and stainless steel at the centre of modern art and left a lasting mark on later abstract sculpture.
Born in Decatur in the American Midwest, he studied at the Art Students League of New York. In 1933 he made his first iron sculpture after seeing photographs of works by Picasso and Julio Gonzalez. During the Second World War he worked as a welder in a locomotive factory, an experience that strengthened his technical command of the material. After 1945 he developed a personal language: rather than casting bronze from moulds, he built each piece by welding steel directly, much as a painter applies paint to canvas.
In 1955 and 1956, while a visiting artist at Indiana University in Bloomington, he produced the Forgings, eleven industrially forged steel sculptures worked by cutting, flattening and bending each bar. His later series, including the Agricolas and above all the Cubi works (1961-1965), large stainless-steel blocks set on pedestals, show his interest in geometric form and polished surfaces. Smith also drew and painted throughout his life, producing between 300 and 400 drawings a year by 1953. In his final years he made the Last Nudes, enamel paintings on canvas laid on the floor.
His early work also voiced a critique of war's violence, visible in the Medals for Dishonor, bronze reliefs with imagery close to Surrealism. He died in 1965, aged 59, in a road accident near Bennington, Vermont. He is remembered today as one of the artists who redefined metal as a medium close to painting, and in 2005 his Cubi XXVIII sold at auction for 23.8 million dollars, a record for contemporary art.