Known for large-scale sculptures, di Suvero is also represented by small works in two and three dimensions.
Mark di Suvero: "Eviva Amore" , detail, at the Nasher Sculpture CenterThe big steel sculptures of Mark di Suvero are such public presences in so many places that it can be easy to overlook them as super-size decor accessories. The gigantic red, towering through two levels of NorthPark Center, is surely one of the most often seen artworks in North Texas. The artist’s sprawlinghails visitors to the south entrance of the Dallas Museum of Art.
Celebrating its 20th anniversary, and months before the artist’s 90th birthday, the Nasher is presenting the first major museum exhibition of di Suvero’s work in more than 30 years. For an artist so much associated with gigantic I-beam creations, di Suvero here is revealed as no less a master of intimacies. Small-scale sculptures have a gnarly playfulness, some even balanced for spinning. Works on paper — many, but not all, studies for sculptures — are astonishingly beautiful.
His first solo exhibition, in 1960, attracted considerable notice, but a few months earlier he was badly injured in an elevator accident at a construction site. Told he would never walk again, within two years he learned to maneuver with braces and crutches. He also learned to control the big cranes needed to bolt and weld the large steel sculptures with which he was increasingly identified.
It’s easy to see antecedents to di Suvero’s work in an adjacent Nasher gallery: totemic creations of David Smith, a small sculptural abstraction by Julio González, John Chamberlain’s assemblage of mangled auto body parts. Di Suvero’s splayed I-beams can also be seen as upended three-dimensional realizations of Franz Kline’s streaks of black paint on white.In works both great and small, there’s tension between forces spreading and centering.
In addition to the small-scale sculptures, the Nasher show’s greatest revelations are the drawings and paintings mainly displayed downstairs. Boldly gestural, done in ink and marker, these often toy with geometries to be realized in three dimensions. Others, suggesting Chinese calligraphy, seem purely abstract, purely for visual pleasure. While best known for monumental works in steel, di Suvero can wield a brush or marker with gestural precision — indeed, eloquence.
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