Leon Polk Smith
Leon Polk Smith ( born May 20, 1906 in Chickasha, Oklahoma; † December 4, 1996 in New York, United States) was an American painter. His geometric- constructive works were influenced by Piet Mondrian. His style is assigned to the Hard -edge painting, of which he is one of the most important representatives.
Smith was born in the U.S. confederation as the eighth of nine children one year before entering Oklahoma. His parents settled there at the end of the 19th century on Indian territory at. So he grew up among the tribes of North American Indians of the Choctaw and Chickasaw. After high school he worked for several years on different farms. Later he worked in Arizona in road and construction of telephone systems. After the parental farm was closed and he was thus needed to give no further financial support, he gave up these activities and devoted himself to the training of teachers. Until 1934 he attended East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English from. He began his professional career as a teacher, but fell ill soon after, hard to polio. In 1936 he moved to New York City, enrolled at Columbia University and for the Teachers College. After graduating with a Master of Arts, he returned to Oklahoma and took a trip to Europe in 1939, but without coming to Germany. He took a job as an assistant professor at Georgia Teachers College in Collegeboro.
With thirty years, Smith has started to become an artist. The first exhibition of paintings fifteen and eighteen watercolors was held in the Uptown Galleries of New York in January and February 1941. 1942 followed by two more exhibitions. On the first he showed inspired by his trip to Mexico paintings. In the second, he already turned away from the realistic art from and abstract art. He gave up his job in Georgia and moved to Delaware. In 1943 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1944 he moved to New York. Apart from two years in Florida and a short stay in Cuba he remained resident there for the rest of his life. In 1958 he got a grant from the Longview Foundation, and in 1968 a scholarship from the Tamarind Institute.
Smith tries to bring form, color and space in a balance in his works. His works are influenced by his Indian roots. He frequently used round or other non-standard screens.