Adolescents

Tony Smith worked as an architect with Frank Lloyd Wright before becoming a sculptor in his forties. Working in the style of Geometric Abstraction and Minimalism, Smith believed that beauty could be found in simple geometric shapes. As you can see in this sculpture, using simple shapes, Smith made a form that is quite complex. As you walk around the sculpture, notice how different it looks from each side. Viewing the work from different angles makes some shapes prominent and others less apparent. Artists working in a Minimalist style strove to remove any evidence of the artist’s hand from their work. One way they tried to achieve this is through the industrial manufacture of their works. Smith made small cardboard models of his works, and then had a factory fabricate them in steel. The works were then painted matte black.