David SmithNight Window: David Smith Spray Paintings, 1958–1964

David Smith’s Sprays of 1958–1964: paintings made by spraying enamel over metal scraps and found objects laid on canvas, leaving their silhouettes.

The sculptor began the Sprays after noticing the scorched outlines his welding left on the whitewashed floor of his shop. He laid scrap metal, paper and other leftovers on canvas, sprayed commercial enamel over them and lifted them away, so the shapes stay behind as pale forms in clouds of color.

Large canvases of the kind first shown at French & Company in New York in 1959 hang alongside medium and small Sprays, some made from machine-shop templates or food scraps.

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