I do not often follow its path from a previously conceived drawing. If I have a strong feeling about its start, I do not need to know its end; the ba… - David Smith

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I do not often follow its path from a previously conceived drawing. If I have a strong feeling about its start, I do not need to know its end; the battle for solution is the most important. If the end of the work seems too complete and final, posing no question, I am apt to work back from the end, that in its finality it poses a question and not a solution.
Sometimes when I start a sculpture I begin with only a realized part; the rest is travel to be unfolded, much in the order of a dream.

English
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About David Smith

David Smith (March 9, 1906 – May 23, 1965) was an American Abstract Expressionist sculptor best known for creating large steel abstract geometric sculptures.

Also Known As

Pen Names: Smith‏, David Rowland
Alternative Names: David Rowland Smith Deṿid Smit David Roland Smith W Smith David RoLand Smith David Smith (1906-1965) Roland David Smith

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Additional quotes by David Smith

Visions are from the imaginative mind, sculpture can come from the found discards in nature, from sticks and stones and parts and pieces, assembled or monolithic, solid form, open form, lines of form, or, like a painting, the illusion of form. And sculpture can be painting and painting can be sculpture..

[learning European modern art by seeing it in the art-magazine 'w:Cahiers d'art'].. ..my heritage was all those things; [De Stijl, Constructivism, Cubism, Surrealism ] simultaneously, so I am all those things. I hope with a very strong intellectual regard for Cubism, and an admiration for it, because it was great at a particular time. It was both painting and sculpture. It was a great point of liberation in both painting and sculpture, and especially sculpture. [David Smith was one of the few sculptors in the art scene of American Abstract Expressionism ]

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Possibly I can explain my own procedure more easily. When I begin a sculpture I'm not always sure how it is going to end. In a way it has a relationship to the work before, it is in continuity with the previous work — it often holds a promise or a gesture toward the one to follow.

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