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N.Y. City

Leon Polk SmithWW-1945-164594

1945·Oil and pencil on linen·Overall: 46 3/4 × 32 3/4 in. (118.7 × 83.2 cm)

<p>Leon Polk Smith, <em>N.Y. City</em>, 1945. Oil and pencil on linen, overall: 46 3/4 × 32 3/4 in. (118.7 × 83.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Edward R. Downe, Jr. Purchase Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts in honor of the Museum's 50th Anniversary 79.24. © The Leon Polk Smith Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1945
Medium: Oil and pencil on linen
Dimensions: Overall: 46 3/4 × 32 3/4 in. (118.7 × 83.2 cm)
Collection: Whitney Museum of American Art
Artist: Leon Polk Smith

Artist

Leon Polk Smith

Painting

Leon Polk Smith was an American abstract painter whose geometric compositions use bold, contrasting colors and clean linear forms to create optical dynamism. Working primarily in acrylic and oil, his paintings from the postwar period onward employed simple shapes, high-saturated color fields, and diagonal compositions that activate the entire canvas surface. Smith's reductive visual language anticipated color field painting while maintaining a distinct structural rigor rooted in precise geometry and architectural principles.

New York, USA

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