Born just outside of Indian territory in Oklahoma to parents of Cherokee descent, Leon Polk Smith moved to New York City at age 30, thus establishing a bicultural identity that would provide the basis for his starkly reductive work. Polk was a pioneer of geometric hard-edge painting, and his exposure in New York to the work of Piet Mondrian, among others, ultimately paved the way for the American minimalism of the 1950s and 1960s, alongside such painters as Ellsworth Kelly. Polk drew from the formal elements of Native American design and craft and from the nonobjectivity of the European avant garde. Spatial and formal concerns defined his screenprints and lithographs, and their flat and opaque qualities suited his artistic vocabulary. Technical difficulties at Tamarind limited the run of this particular study of spatial pressure, resulting in an artist’s run of 11 as opposed to the standard 20.