The Sculptor After Dark, David Smith’s Spray Paintings Come to West Hollywood
Hauser & Wirth shows the seldom-seen spray paintings Smith made at night between 1958 and 1964.
David Smith (1906 to 1965) is remembered as the sculptor most closely associated with abstract expressionism. The new show at Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood is about what he did after dark.
Night Window, a survey of Smith’s spray paintings from 1958 to 1964, runs through January 16 and gathers what the gallery calls “a seldom-seen body of work.” According to the exhibition text, Smith sculpted by day and turned to paintings and drawings at night.
The gallery frames the spray paintings as an inversion of his sculpture, a body of work in which “negative space becomes structure, color becomes atmosphere, absence becomes subject.”
The setting suits the subject. Hauser & Wirth opened its West Hollywood space in 2023 in a 1930s Spanish Colonial Revival building that was once a vintage car showroom. Annabelle Selldorf turned it into a 6,000-square-foot exhibition space, and it earned LEED Platinum certification in 2024.
Admission is free and no booking is needed. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
