Leon Polk Smith

Untitled, 1959

Paper on paper

Sheet Size: 25 5/8 x 19 3/4 inches (65.09 x 50.17 cm)

Framed: 31 x 24 1/2 x 1 1/5 inches (78.74 x 62.23 x 3.05 cm)

Courtesy of The Leon Polk Smith Foundation

The artist Leon Polk Smith (1906 - 1996) is heralded for his commitment to simplified shapes, brilliant colors, and minimal yet complex geometric abstract compositions. Born outside the small town of Chickasha in what would become a year later part of the new state of Oklahoma, Smith was educated in Oklahoma and New York City in the 1930s and 1940s. He later attributed his encounters with the works of Piet Mondrian. Constantin Brancusi, and Hans Arp as formative to his artistic development. In his hard-edged paintings and works on paper, Smith would push the geometry of Mondrian into curved compositions that celebrated restraint and spatial complexity. From his first solo exhibition in New York City in 1941 through his death in 1996, Smith’s paintings–frequently on shaped and multipart canvases–exuded a buoyancy and vivacity that was influential in the US and Germany.

Smith has been the subject of numerous survey retrospectives and his work is included in major institutional collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art, the Heard Museum , the Hirshhorn Museum, L.A. County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art in NYC, the National Gallery of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.