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LEON POLK SMITH (Native American, 1906-1996) Oklahoma Vermilion and Black. Oil and collage on canvas. Signed reverse Leon Polk Smith. Inscribed on reverse "Gift to Bob Jamieson 1956 from Leon Polk Smith to Bob Jamieson" Good condition. Diameter 31 ½". We guarantee the authenticity of the painting with a 30-day right to return. The painting is from the collection of Leon Polk Smith's life partner and assistant, Robert Jamieson. A signed letter of provenance from Robert Jamieson will be included with the painting as well as a museum exhibition catalog. From AskArt: "The power in the art of Brancusi and Mondrian had an early and profound effect on Leon Polk Smith who became one of the leading American non-objective color-field precisionists. Smith's success lied in his ability to create works which had a simple, colorful hard-edge presence. His strongest examples of these artistic tenets can be found in his Constellation Series, beginning in 1967. Native American born artist Leon Polk Smith came to New York City, at 30 years of age, in 1936 to study at Columbia University's Teachers' College. The young artist began his career depicting subjects inspired by life in Oklahoma and New York in an amalgam of Surrealist and Expressionist styles. The power of Brancusi and Mondrian's art was ultimately irresistible to Smith, and in 1945, he began to explore the formal problems inherent in the creation of non-objective art. Smith shared Mondrian's affection for New York, writing in 1989: "New York City revealed its physical self to me through the mountains and canyons of the Southwest. There were the ups and downs--the high peaks, the in-betweens, or the canyons, and topped with the great dome... I felt the city to be a perfect equation for a great abstraction." The New York experience was a turning point, and he never looked back. His genius in extending the boundaries of the available geometric tenants truly took hard-edge minimalism to the next level. His free-hand approach, use of diagonals and circles and the abandonment of the European geometricians' grids would "re-invent the purpose of geometric abstraction". Smith's work is including in the permanent collections of numerous museums including the Guggenheim, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the National Gallery of Art."