The sculptor-painter-architect Tony Smith, born in South Orange, New Jersey, in 1912, is one of the best-known unknowns in American art. Most people involved in the art world around New York have met him or know of him. Of the generation and friend of Pollock, Still, Rothko, Newman, he has “always” painted and “always” made sculpture, which he has thought of as a private pursuit and purely experimental….

These sculptures seem to evolve from architecture. Only in a few instances before  has Tony Smith satisfies his sense of scale and monumentality through building… These heavy, primitive, organisms embrace space through volume and deep thrusts. Romanesque rather than Gothic. Even a cube (die) does not attempt abstract purity. The geometry is lost in its earthliness, its corporality.

-Samuel Wagstraff, JR

Curator of Paintings, Wadsworth Antheneum, 1967