WHY IT MATTERS

David Smith, “Voltri VI,” 1962, steel. This is the masterpiece of David Smith’s Herculean series of sculptures made in Voltri, Italy, in 1962. Smith himself called it “a tong with wheels and two end clouds.” The DMA and the Meadows Museum also own major works by Smith.

Maillol, “Night,” 1902-9, cast 1960, bronze. Maillol injected a classical rigor and vitality into modem sculpture, and this posthumous cast from a lost 1902 clay original is among the earliest and most powerful of his great female figures. Several masterpieces by Maillol adorn the entrance and gardens of Trammel! Crow Center.

Willem de Kooning, “Seated Woman,” 1969, cast 1980, bronze. Painter/sculptors abound in post-war American art, and de Kooning is perhaps the greatest of them. This immense late bronze is part of de Kooning’s lifelong artistic meditation on the female body.

Jean Dubuffet, “The Gossiper II,” 1969-70, enlarged, 1984, painted polyester resin. This unique enlargement created under Dubuffet’s supervision is one of a group of “public characters” by the painter/ sculptor based on those we meet routinely in European plazas. This gossiper will now gesticulate wildly in a Dallas garden.

Joan Miro, “Caress of a Bird,” 1967, painted bronze. Miro, like many of the greatest modernist sculptors, is known primarily as a painter. In this late masterpiece, the two mediums come together as closely as they ever have. Interestingly, the Kimbell Museum recently purchased another major bronze by Miro, which stands in front of the museum.

Alexander Calder, “Three Bollards,” 1970, painted steel. Calder was the first American sculptor to gain international recognition, and this work is a masterpiece from the end of his long, working life. There are other outdoor works by Calder in downtown Dallas and Fort Worth.

Henry Moore, “Reclining Figure, Angles,” 1979, cast 1980, bronze. There is little doubt that Moore was the greatest figurai sculptor of the 20th century, and this late masterpiece takes its place in a superb group of Moores in the Nastier Collection. The DMA owns a virtually definitive collection of small-scale bronzes by Moore that complement the monumental works in the Nasher Collection.

Anthony Caro, “Sculpture Three,” 1961, painted steel. Cam emerged as the most important British sculptor since Henry Moore with the appearance of brilliant works like this in the early 1960s. Curiously, its origins can be found not in Cam’s Great Britain, but in the work of the American sculptor David Smith. Both the DMA and the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art have works by Caro in their permanent collections.

Barbara Hepworth, “Square with Two Circles [Monolith],” 1963, bronze. When this masterpiece makes its appearance in the Nastier Sculpture Garden, it will give focus to a wonderful, small group of Hepworth bronzes at the DMA and the Dallas Public Library.