Line, Color, and the Concept of Space

Lisson Los Angeles and Marc Selwyn Fine Art are pleased to present concurrent exhibitions of works by Leon Polk Smith (1906–1996), marking the artist’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles in more than a decade. Spanning both galleries, the presentations bring together more than twenty paintings alongside a selection of related works on paper, tracing the development and breadth of Smith’s mature practice from the mid-1950s through 1980. Featuring several works never before exhibited, the exhibitions explore Smith’s pioneering investigations of positive and negative space, line, color, and form, revealing the remarkable range of an artist whose approach to geometric abstraction remained both rigorous and inventive.

While sharing a common focus on Smith’s sustained exploration of geometry and space, the two presentations offer distinct perspectives on his practice. At Lisson Los Angeles, works including Inca (1970), Red Triangle, Black Square (1968), and Stretch of Black II (1961) foreground the relationships between individual shapes and the larger compositions they comprise. At Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Romance of the Spheres (1963) and Rising Red (1980) highlight Smith’s investigations of curved forms, spatial tension, and the interplay between painted shape and surrounding ground. Together, the exhibitions illuminate the breadth of an artistic language in which seemingly simple geometric elements give rise to complex and shifting perceptions of space.