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Tanktotem II

David Smith American
1952–53
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 920
About 1933 Smith began to make small sculptures with found materials. Initially working in a room at Terminal Iron Works, a Brooklyn welding shop, Smith moved in 1940 to Bolton Landing in the Adirondacks, where he named his studio after the site of his original space. Using scavenged metal or machine parts—in this case commercial boiler tops ordered from a catalogue—and, after 1950, working in series, Smith crafted forms that he referred to as "personages," for their physical presence and human scale. The anthropomorphic Tanktotems combine his interest in the Surrealist totem—an object at once desired and taboo—and the impulse to achieve a new spatial reality through industrial materials and techniques such as welding.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Tanktotem II
  • Artist: David Smith (American, Decatur, Indiana 1906–1965 Bennington, Vermont)
  • Date: 1952–53
  • Medium: Steel and bronze
  • Dimensions: 80 1/2 x 49 1/2 x 18 1/2in. (204.5 x 125.7 x 47cm)
  • Classification: Sculpture
  • Credit Line: Fletcher Fund, 1953
  • Object Number: 53.93
  • Rights and Reproduction: © Estate of David Smith/ VAGA, New York, NY
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

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