Agnes Martin

Agnes Martin was recognized at a relatively early stage of her career when she was in her mid-forties. She was always radical in her approach, so when she found her artistic expression as a 30-year-old, she burned everything she had previously drawn and painted. In the mid-1950s, her peculiar minimalism was discovered by an art dealer. She moved to New York and became part of the city’s art scene, that among others included Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Barnett Newman and Ad Reinhardt. Later in the sixties she was part of an art group consisting of recognised artists like Mark Rotko, Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman and Donald Judd.

Agnes Martin built her oeuvre around the search for sublime beauty and serenity, following her belief that “art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings.”

Her works cover from the early organic abstractions to her iconic, minimalist and monochrome fine-lined grids and square blocks in muted, pastels colors. She did not distinguish between drawing and painting, and several of the pictures were done with pencil or graphite as well as gesso and diluted, transparent acrylic paint. The square is integral to Martin’s work, both as the shape of her six-by- six-foot canvases and as an enduring motif, influenced by the Taoist pursuit of balance and harmony “My paintings are not about what is seen,” she said. "They are about what is known forever in the mind.”