Smithson's 'Dante' paintings include two versions of Walls of Dis, plus The Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. The last three, 'semi-abstractions based on a rough grid,' correspond to the tripartite structure of Dante's Divine Comedy; Dis, the shadowy city containing the lowest region of the netherworld, is drawn from Canto VIII of The Inferno. [...] Another version of Walls of Dis alludes to the confining architecture of the city—'mosques,' 'deep moats,' and 'iron walls'—by employing a rough grid, similar to that in Adolph Gottlieb's 'pictograph' paintings of the 1940s. The biomorphic forms locked within the grid evoke the inhabitants of Dis: 'Thousand and more...of spirits fallen from Heaven.'