Jubilee

Leon Polk Smith

1 of 2

Object Label

Leon Polk Smith was born in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) a century ago. After receiving a Masters in Art Education at Columbia University in 1938, he had his first one-person exhibition in 1941. Since then his work has been featured in countless exhibitions worldwide.

An admirer of the abstract paintings of Piet Mondrian, Smith decided early in his career to dispense with the recognizable object as part of his paintings. In the mid-1940s he began painting abstract compositions based on the relationships of basic geometric elements, which he gradually reduced to a minimum.

Jubilee, one of Smith's late works, is an extreme example of this economy of means. The four lines seem to move across the canvas, suggesting spatial relationships and depth of field. The painting illustrates well a statement of the artist's creative principles that he wrote in 1961: "Three elements which interested me in art are line, color, and the concept of space and its use as a positive force."

Caption

Leon Polk Smith American, 1906–1996. Jubilee, 1992. Acrylic on canvas, 90 x 52 in. (228.6 x 132.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Leon Polk Smith, 2011.12.10. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2011.12.10_color_corrected_SL1.jpg)

Gallery

Not on view

Title

Jubilee

Date

1992

Medium

Acrylic on canvas

Classification

Painting

Dimensions

90 x 52 in. (228.6 x 132.1 cm)

Credit Line

Bequest of Leon Polk Smith

Accession Number

2011.12.10

Rights

© artist or artist's estate

The Brooklyn Museum holds a non-exclusive license to reproduce images of this work of art from the rights holder named here. The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act. For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org. If you wish to contact the rights holder for this work, please email copyright@brooklynmuseum.org and we will assist if we can.

Have information?

Have information about an artwork? Contact us at

bkmcollections@brooklynmuseum.org.