Smoke by Tony Smith

Smoke was designed in 1967 by American artist Tony Smith. Its impact was so successful it made the cover of TIME Magazine the same year. The only large-scale work Smith ever created specifically for an interior space, Smoke now enchants passersby in its new outdoor home.

This two-tiered aluminium sculpture stands over seven metres tall and is a combination of geometric components, including five tetrahedrons and 45 extended octahedrons. The sculpture’s powerful form is based on the artist’s fascination with geometry and the morphology of organic shapes, like crystals and honeycombs.

The title Smoke appealed to Smith because of the complex spaces created within the sculpture, in which its logic disappears, like smoke.

The first version of the sculpture was made of painted plywood. Another version of Smoke can be seen at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

About the Artist

Tony Smith (1912-1980) was an American sculptor, visual artist, architectural designer and a noted theorist on art. He made more than 50 large-scale sculptures in the final two decades of his life.

Smith’s work is included in leading international collections, such as the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Menil Collection, Houston; the LACMA as well as the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands, among others.