Portrait of Leon Polk Smith. (b/w photo)

Leon Polk Smith (1906-1996), born in 1906 in Chickasha, Indian Territory, a year before it became the state of Oklahoma, is a painter known for his geometrically oriented abstract works. Many of his paintings consist of reduced forms in few colors on unframed canvases of unusual shapes. He is considered one of the founders of the Hard-edge style of Minimalism. Leon Polk Smith spent most of his life in New York City. His works are represented in the collections of many prestigious museums, among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. (Marc field 094)