Agnes Martin 1912, Macklin, Canada-2004, Taos, NM, USA

  • The work of Agnes Martin has been described as an “essay in discretion on inwardness and silence.” Although she is often associated with Minimalism, Martin positioned her practice within Abstract Expressionism and emerged as one of the prominent figures of the movement in the twentieth century.

     

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    Her art articulates a distinctive trajectory within postwar abstraction, in which emotional intensity is conveyed through restraint, repetition, and clarity rather than gesture or expressive excess.

     

    As a young adult, Martin moved to the United States, settling first in Bellingham, Washington, in 1931, then in New York in 1941, and later in Albuquerque. From 1946 to 1948 she studied painting at the University of New Mexico. Her early work reflects the influence of Cubism, Surrealism, and Expressionism, while already indicating a sustained move toward reduction and structural order.

     

    In 1957 Martin returned to New York and became part of a close artistic milieu that included Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Barnett Newman, Robert Rauschenberg, and James Rosenquist. During the late 1950s, her biomorphic forms gave way to increasingly geometric abstraction. Working predominantly on square canvases, she developed atmospheric compositions structured through subtle chromatic modulation and simplified form, establishing the foundations of her mature visual language.

     

    Over the following years, Martin refined this approach into quiet monochromatic surfaces articulated by delicately hand-drawn pencil grids. These works balance strict formal discipline with minute variation, revealing a tension between order and intuition. Despite growing recognition, Martin withdrew from New York in 1967, undertaking an extended journey across the United States and Canada before resettling in New Mexico. During this period, she devoted herself to writing prose on art, perception, and life.

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    Martin returned to painting in 1972 with renewed focus. Her later works are characterized by horizontal and vertical bands rendered in soft tones of pink, blue, and yellow. Over the next three decades, seriality and the use of stripes became central to her compositions. Through the application of diluted acrylic over multiple layers of white ground, her canvases achieved an increasing luminosity and an expanded sense of spatial calm.

     

    In the early 1990s, Martin adapted her format to five-foot square canvases and reintroduced a broader palette, including greens and vivid orange. In some late works, she revisited geometric structures present in her earlier paintings, reaffirming the continuity and coherence of her artistic inquiry.

     

    For Agnes Martin, abstraction was not a formal exercise but a means of approaching states of harmony, clarity, and transcendence. Across more than four decades, she produced a body of work that quietly but decisively explored the boundaries between order and freedom, material precision and metaphysical aspiration, securing her place as one of the most rigorous and influential artists of modern abstraction.

     

    Selected Public and Private Collections:

    The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States
    The Museum of Modern Art, New York, United States
    Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, United States
    Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, United States
    Dia Art Foundation, New York, United States
    National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., United States

    Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom
    Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
    Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
    Fundació La Caixa, Barcelona, Spain
    Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy

    Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, United States
    Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, United States
    The Menil Collection, Houston, United States
    San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, United States

    The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan

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