Senior & Shopmaker Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of prints and related unique works by abstract painter Leon Polk Smith (1906-1996). Polk Smith holds a unique place in the distinguished tradition of American Geometric Abstract painting (together with such artists as Burgoyne Diller, Fritz Glarner, Al Held, and Ellsworth Kelly). Polk Smith's printmaking activity, begun in 1965, additionally resulted in close to 70 distinct images, characterized by buoyant forms floating on solid backgrounds with a vibrant and high-contrast color palette. These explorations of non-objective imagery put Polk Smith at the forefront of such art historical movements as Color Field, Minimalist, and Hard Edge painting.

Senior & Shopmaker Gallery will present a selection of early color lithographs dating from 1968 that Polk Smith created at Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles; large-format screenprints from 1987 printed at Edition Domberger, Stuttgart; and rare, self-published silkscreens on metal from 1962. A small selection of related drawings will also be on view.

Polk Smith's work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; the Whitney Museum of American Art; and the National Gallery of Art, among others. In 1995, the Brooklyn Museum hosted a retrospective of the artist's work, Leon Polk Smith: American Painter. Earlier in 2017, Lisson Gallery organized an exhibition of Leon Polk Smith's shaped, multi-part “Constellation” series of paintings from the late 1960s and 70s, and an exhibition of drawings, Geometry in Motion: Leon Polk Smith Works on Paper, is currently on view at the Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York through December 3.

Senior & Shopmaker is the representative for Polk Smith's editioned works from the Leon Polk Smith Foundation. Established by the artist himself, the foundation has actively sought to preserve and promote Polk Smith's art and legacy since his death at the age of ninety in 1996.