Leon Polk Smith (1906–1996) has a unique place in American geometric abstract painting, for his simple shapes, brilliant colours and intense compositions. This publication focuses on the pivotal moment in the 1950s when he moved from the Eurocentric influences of abstraction to forge his own visual language infused with the trends of the time.

Leon Polk Smith: Big Form, Big Space accompanies the recent exhibition of the same name at the Contemporary Art Gallery (CAG), Vancouver (2021) and its extended presentation at Palm Springs Art Museum, California (2022), focusing on paintings and works on paper that chart a key moment in Smith’s career. Born outside Chickasha, in what would become Oklahoma, Smith grew up in a farming community among the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations. During the 1950s, his work moved away from the Eurocentric impulses of his formative years to introduce and connect to themes, ideas, forms and conditions present in his rural upbringing and personal identity.

Including critical essays by Barry Schwabsky and Ashley Holland, this extensively illustrated publication features a series of wide-ranging readings of Smith’s work, examining the complexities surrounding issues of context, time and identity within an appreciation of his place in hard-edge modernist abstraction.

Leon Polk Smith (1906–1996) holds a unique place in the tradition of American geometric abstract painting, heralded for his lifelong commitment to simple shapes, brilliant colours and intense compositions. Since his first solo exhibition in New York City in 1941, he has been the subject of numerous retrospectives, with work included in major collections, such as the Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and Whitney Museum of American Art.