Tony Smith

Detroit, Founders Society, Detroit Institute of Arts

Max J. Pincus, Michigan (acquired from the above in 1971)

Detroit, DuMouchelle Art Galleries, 13 December 1992, lot 2143

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Spitball exemplifies Tony Smith’s unique fusion of modular geometric forms and proclivity to push the expressive possibilities that can be achieved through a relatively limited number of elements. Smith named the sculpture Spitball because he felt that his original small handmade tetrahedral model out of paper resembled the shape. Symmetrical when rotated, the sculpture reflects light from the outer faces and absorbs light from the inner faces, rendering the work deceptively complex. This multiple was commissioned by The Friends of Modern Art at the Detroit Institute of Art. It is the smaller version of the three 1961 monumental Spitball sculptures in the collections of The Baltimore Museum of Art; The Menil Collection, Houston and Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland.