Spring 2026 Akris collection featuring Leon Polk Smith

6 October 2025

For the Spring 2026 Akris collection, Albert Kriemler looked to the mid-century minimalist painter Leon Polk Smith, whose vibrant, geometric works helped defined the Hard-Edge style of the 1950s and 60s.

Drawing connection to Leon Polk Smith, structures emerge through the properties of the fabric, a signature style of Albert Kriemler. Sensuality and intuition beneath Smith’s minimalism unfold in drape fringe knit, an in-house development echoing his curvilinear line. Trapezoid embroidery, Akris’ distinctive shape, appears in dress and gown, not as ornament, but as presence in couture-like construction.

Considered a pioneering figure of the hard-edge style of Minimal abstract art, Leon Polk Smith (1906 –1996) was born in Chickasha, then Indian Territory, which became the US state of Oklahoma the following year. He drew inspiration from the vast spaces and horizons of the American Southwest and from Native American traditions and creative forms.

In the early 1950s, he began his esteemed Correspondence series of drawings and paintings, of which Seven Involvements in One is the most ambitious work. Two colors meet along a curved or straight line, fusing color and shape into a unified whole. Smith’s work is represented in major collections, including MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Whitney, the Brooklyn Museum, the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and the Musée de Grenoble, France. His art and legacy live on through the Leon Polk Smith Foundation, based in New York City, his home and workplace for more than fifty years.

Explore the collection via Akris.

Image: Leon Polk Smith, 1962 © Leon Polk Smith Foundation