Untitled 1972

Curator: Standing before us is an Untitled work by Leon Polk Smith, a drawing created in 1972. What strikes you first about this composition? Editor: Well, it's sunny! Like a stack of half-eaten lemon squares against a stark vanilla sky. There’s something about the interplay of those sharp, yellow triangles with the rounded rectangles that's almost…playful. Curator: Indeed. Smith's hard-edge painting style is evident even in this work on paper. The geometric shapes are meticulously rendered. Note how the simple division of forms—rectangles bisected by diagonals—creates dynamic tension within a limited visual field. It epitomizes some movements of colour-field-painting here. Editor: Absolutely. The negative space becomes as important as the painted areas, doesn't it? And the subtle line work...almost feels like a ghost drawing hovering just beneath the surface of reality. Makes you wonder what lies behind the bold strokes. Curator: The reduction of form allows one to apprehend the underlying structures governing spatial relationships. One can understand the formalism driving not just Smith, but his peers within modernist painting generally. Editor: I think of Smith in dialogue with Josef Albers somehow – colour as form, feeling as concept. And also as the bridge towards artists later creating installations through light. Is there something you observe, seeing it this time around, that moves you differently now? Curator: On closer viewing, I am appreciating now the balance created between order and unpredictability. A reminder perhaps that within constraint also exists freedom. What stays with you, leaving this work behind? Editor: Definitely the echo of sunshine on a white wall, reminding us that simplicity can hold multitudes.