Smith, David. (1906 - 1965) [Gitlin, Harry. (1914 - 1986)?]
Collection of Original Photographs
Interesting collection of nine 11 x 14 inch original photographs relating to the American abstract expressionist sculptor and painter, best known for creating large steel abstract geometric sculptures, and including depictions of his celebrated Cubi series of stainless steel sculptures built from cubes, rectangular solids and cylinders with spheroidal or flat endcaps. The collection includes a solo full length portrait of the artist as well as a striking image of him with his daughters Candida and Rebecca at Terminal Iron Works, Bolton Landing, NY, a copy of which is also in the collection of the Storm King Art Center and is dated by them to ca. 1963, the balance of the collection thus likely also from the same period. The remaining 7 images depict Smith's sculptures, most in situ at the fields of Bolton Landing.The portrait of the artist is signed by the photographer in blue ink to lower right "H Gitlin" and on the verso "Harry Gitlin / 75-06 169 St. Flushing, NY 11366," with an illegible word and "#2". This print is on slightly heavier photograph paper with no maker identification; the remaining prints are all on Kodak paper, 7 of which are inscribed in black ink on the respective versos with the numbers 1-15; 2-18; 2-17; 2-22; 1-37; 2-19; 2-35. Slight rippling to margins of the portrait, overall in fine condition. Together with two 4 x 3 inch bust portrait photographs of Smith, each stamped "34" on the verso.
Though only one is signed, the nine large prints are all presumed to be by the same photographer. However, other than the identified examples of his photographs of Smith in the Storm King collection, we have been unable to trace a photographer of the name Harry Gitlin. It is possible that these are the work of the famed American lighting designer of this name, but we have been unable to find any mention of his photography work and thus can only offer this as a very tenuous attribution.
In 1929 David Smith bought a dilapidated house and barn in Bolton Landing, New York on 86 acres of land. He moved there permanently in 1940. The landscape profoundly influenced Smith’s art-making practices. The Bolton Landing studio and sculpture workshop became the birthplace of many of Smith’s best-known works. “My father put his sculptures in our fields so that he could look at each work in relation to the natural world of the mountains and sky and also to its fellow sculptures. Again and again, he referred to his "work stream"; each work of art being as a vessel filled from the stream while never wholly separate. I understand his term to mean the flow of his identity made physically manifest--the process by which images and ideas from decades or days before inform a work in progress or yet to be made.
David Smith's fields as a place for the dialogue between sculptures evolved from his creative process, from an interplay between nature and the artist's own nature. The artist's identity makes its mark as a stream carves its channel into a mountainside.” (Smith, Candida, “The Fields of David Smith,” in The Fields of David Smith, ed. Irving Sandler, Candida Smith and Jerry L. Thompson, 17-38. Mountainville: Storm King Art Center: New York: Thames & Hudson, 1999.)
(18373)Signed Photograph Art & Design