David Smith: Sculpture 1932 - 1965 at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

YSP presents a major exhibition of over 40 works by the pioneering and highly influential American artist David Smith (1906-1965).

Widely hailed as one of the 20th century’s outstanding sculptors, this is the first solo exhibition of Smith’s work in the UK since Tate Modern’s 2006 project and the largest ever outside the capital. This landmark exhibition charts the development of Smith’s unique visual language over four decades, crucially bringing together a number of his sculptures in the open-air that are rarely seen in this way outside the USA. Within the Underground Gallery over 30 sculptures trace an unfolding narrative of material, technique and form. Beginning with Smith’s earliest constructions from the 1930s that combine wood with elements including mussel and clam shells, wire and nails, the exhibition spans work through to the artist’s mature, bold, large-scale painted and stainless steel sculptures of the 1960s.

David Smith: Sculpture 1932-1965 is YSP’s headline exhibition for 2019 and our principal contribution to the inaugural Yorkshire Sculpture International, produced in partnership with the Henry Moore Institute, The Hepworth Wakefield, and Leeds Art Gallery. Yorkshire Sculpture International comprises a number of exhibitions exploring artist Phyllida Barlow’s statement that “sculpture is the most anthropological of the arts”. With Yorkshire’s rich history as the birthplace and inspiration for sculptors including Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, our collaboration considers the human impulse to connect with objects, investigating both the physical diversity and the political agency of sculpture in the 20th and 21st centuries.