Leon Polk Smith

This volume highlights the work of American artist Leon Polk Smith (1906–96), one of the founders of the hard-edge style of minimalist art, who rose to prominence in the late 1950s and early 1960s with his distinctive shaped canvas series. While his minimalist peers were shifting away from modernism, Smith was wholeheartedly advancing the formal and rational elements of the modernist tradition, in particular the legacy of Mondrian. Published for a 2017 exhibition at Lisson Gallery, this book focuses on paintings and drawings from the artist’s seminal Constellation series from the late 1960s and early 1970s. The publication features an essay by the poet and writer John Yau, alongside color reproductions of each of the works included in the exhibition. An illustrated chronology details the artist’s life and work, including previously unpublished archival material.