The sculptor David Smith (1906-1965) briefly worked as a welder and riveter for the Studebaker automobile factory before moving to New York to study art in 1926. Using the techniques he had learned in industrial welding, Smith soon began his career as a sculptor by learning to “draw” with metal, welding together fragmented pieces of metal to create dynamic, linear sculptures, and in the process becoming the first American sculptor to work with welded metal as his medium. Enchanted by new technologies and materials, which Smith believed had extraordinary artistic potential, the artist embraced qualities of industrial manufacturing in his art.

Smith experimented with abstract, flattened forms in open space, eschewing volumetric form in favor of a frontal, gapped, and linear mode of representation—abandoning the traditional notion that a sculpture should be modeled or carved around a central mass. The spontaneous aesthetic of Smith’s sculptures mirrored the Abstract Expressionist painting movement of the 1940s and 1950s, translating the gestural, abstract language of the New York School into three-dimensions.