DALLAS, TEXAS.- Featuring numerous works on public display for the first time, the Nasher Sculpture Center will present David Smith: Drawing and Sculpting, an exhibition exploring the fascinating interaction between the artist’s drawings, paintings and sculptures. On view through July 17, 2005 and co-organized by the Nasher Sculpture Center and the David Smith Estate, the exhibition assembles approximately fifteen seminal sculptures and seventy major drawings and paintings from the Nasher Collection, the Estate, and other public and private collections.

Smith has long been recognized as one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. His protean career single-handedly brought new maturity and international ambition to American sculpture. Forty years after his death, his works still astonish in their variety, technical mastery and brawny creative energy. While already known for his work as a sculptor, Smith’s drawings have remained largely unknown. This exhibition will highlight the artist’s works on paper and explore the ways in which Smith’s experimentation with other media impacted his sculptural works.

“This is one of the few exhibitions ever mounted to examine the interactions between Smith’s work in different media,” said Dr. Steve Nash, Director of the Nasher Sculpture Center. “We want to spotlight the power and beauty of Smith’s drawings and also contribute to the understanding of his working methods. It will be a pleasure and honor to exhibit in Dallas so many outstanding works by this great artist.”

The exhibition will span from Smith’s early development as a sculptor in the 1930s under the influence of European modernism to the powerful and evocative constructions in iron and steel from his maturity, examining the sculpture alongside the drawings that accompanied them. The exhibition will illustrate not only the range and quality of Smith’s work as a draftsman, but also the complex ways that his drawings and paintings inform his three dimensional work. Smith drew regularly throughout his career for many different reasons: to make notes, plan sculptures, jot down observations, explore graphic techniques, relax, and make striking, independent works of art. His vast output of works on paper provides a telling record of his visual thought and experimentation and in themselves represent a great aesthetic accomplishment. But they have never received the recognition they deserve.