Cabinet Pieces: Leon Polk Smith. Form and Space

07/02 – 21/04/2025

Leon Polk Smith (1906 – 1996) is considered one of the most important representatives of geometric abstraction and a co-founder of Hard-Edge Painting. The cabinet piece Leon Polk Smith. Form and Space presents an overview of his work from the 1940s to the 1990s with various graphic works from the museum's collection. Influenced by the non-objective art of the European avant-garde of the interwar period, particularly by Piet Mondrian, as well as by the geometric patterns and grid-like structures of the craft of his ancestors, the Native Americans, Leon Polk Smith finds his way to radical compositions.

The artist explains: "Three elements that have interested me in art are: line, color, and the concept of space and its use as a positive force." The analysis of a balanced yet tension-filled power relationship of these compositional means runs through his entire oeuvre, with his two most significant series aptly named Correspondences and Constellations.

Curator: Julia Nebenführ