Leon Polk Smith

Each season, CAG releases a series of Video Visits that offer short takes on our exhibitions. Presented in five languages — Cantonese, English, French, Mandarin and Spanish — these videos present a variety of perspectives on the work of Leon Polk Smith.
 
### English Video Visits
[Leon Polk Smith: Big Form, Big Space](https://vimeo.com/560626474)
 
### Visites vidéo en français
[Leon Polk Smith: Big Form, Big Space](https://vimeo.com/560626928)
 
### Visitas de video en español
[Leon Polk Smith: Big Form, Big Space](https://vimeo.com/560628620)
 
### 普通话视频之旅
[Leon Polk Smith: Big Form, Big Space](https://vimeo.com/560627747)
 
### 粵語視頻參觀
[Leon Polk Smith: Big Form, Big Space](https://vimeo.com/560625780)


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Screenshot 2022-05-27 131920.png

Summer 2021

Video Visits

The Contemporary Art Gallery presents the first solo exhibition in a public gallery in Canada by American artist Leon Polk Smith (1906-1996). Focusing on paintings and works on paper from the 1950s, the exhibition charts a critical moment in Smith’s artistic career in which the signature visual language of his work began to manifest, reflective both of prevalent trends of the time and an increasing engagement with the contexts of his upbringing and identity. 

Through almost forty works, the exhibition traces a period in which Smith initiated a move away from the Eurocentric impulses of his formative years to embrace and make plain connections to his rural upbringing in the American Southwest, his Indigenous heritage and his identity as a gay man. At times playful, Smith’s refraction of his background is evidenced throughout his work: in his distinctive palette, in his approach to titling, and in the frequent evocation of body, place and landscape, at times recalling shapes, colours and patterns he experienced in his life, family and surroundings. *Big Form, Big Space* provides a timely opportunity to re-evaluate Smith’s place within art history, looking beyond the strict appreciation of his place within hard-edge modernist abstraction to encompass broader considerations of context, time and identity. 

Guest curated by Nigel Prince

*Leon Polk Smith: Big Form, Big Space* is realized with generous support from the Leon Polk Smith Foundation and Lisson Gallery, London, New York and Shanghai. 

### Biography

Leon Polk Smith (1906–1996) holds a unique place in the long tradition of American geometric abstract painting. Born outside Chickasha in what would become the state of Oklahoma, to parents of mixed Cherokee and settler heritage, Smith grew up in a farming community among the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations. He graduated from East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma in 1934, before moving to New York City in 1936, where he attended Columbia University. He remained in New York for the rest of his life. He was a painter heralded for his lifelong commitment to simplified shapes, brilliant colours and minimal, intense compositions. Since his first solo exhibition in New York City in 1941, Smith has been the subject of numerous retrospectives, most recently *Leon Polk Smith: Hiding in Plain Sight*, organised by the Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona which presents his work alongside that of 19th and 20th-century Indigenous artists. His work is included in major institutional collections such as those of the Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

ProgramGuideSummer2021-min.pdf

ExhibitionGuideLeonPolkSmith.pdf

Essay: “Leon Polk Smith: Big Form, Big Space,”  Nigel Prince

A painting by Leon Polk Smith. The work is a vibrant red, painted flatly all over. In the lower half of the image sits a large, light blue shape: two circles connected by a rectangular form.

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001 HEADER - Smith.jpg

An overview shot of a gallery hung with the geometric paintings of Leon Polk Smith. There is a vitrine at the center of the room. Behind the vitrine sits a doorway looking into another gallery.

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01-LeonPolkSmith-2021.jpg

Two paintings by Leon Polk Smith sit on either side of a corner in a gallery space. The paintings are made up of simple, bold shapes in colours such as orange, red, blue and black.

thumbnail_02-LeonPolkSmith-2021.jpg

02-LeonPolkSmith-2021.jpg

Four framed paintings on paper by Leon Polk Smith sit on either side of a corner in a gallery space. The paintings depict shapes in red, blue, white and green.

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03-LeonPolkSmith-2021.jpg

Eleven paintings by Leon Polk Smith sit on either side of a corner in a gallery space, with a vitrine at the center. Six framed paintings hang on the left and two circular paintings on the right.

thumbnail_04-LeonPolkSmith-2021.jpg

04-LeonPolkSmith-2021.jpg

A vitrine sits at the center of a gallery space surrounded by walls displaying the paintings of Leon Polk Smith. A series of small colourful geometric paintings lay flat in the vitrine.

Leon Polk Smith

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