Agnes Martin - Contemporary Art Part II New York Friday, November 13, 2009 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    PaceWildenstein, New York; Private collection, New York; Anthony Meier, San Francisco; Hester van Roijen, London; Private collection, Massachusetts

  • Exhibited


    New York, PaceWildenstein, Agnes Martin New Drawings and Watercolors, March 28 - April 27, 1996

  • Catalogue Essay

    The work of Agnes Martin can be characterized by wonderfully subtle abstractions that, despite their mechanical nature, are intensely poetic. In her grid drawings, Martin directly confronts her Minimalist contemporaries through her trademark pattern by demanding long meditative contemplation from her viewers regardless of the pattern’s seemingly simple structure. This meditative experience is at odds with the major tenets of American Minimalism.
    The powerful tension the present lot exudes is due to the artist’s manipulation of an arrangement of lines, normally considered cold, intellectual and purely formal into a serene and delicate motif that transcends its own simplicity. Martin’s artistic triumph is her ability to elicit emotion from rational order; her gentle reduction of the visual image until it conveys the most basic archetypal form allows her to evoke the most fundamental emotional responses.

  • Artist Biography

    Agnes Martin

    American • 1912 - 2004

    As an artist defined by minimalism and abstract expressionism, Agnes Martin found serenity in her work. Commonly believed to have schizophrenia, Martin may have exercised her orderly grids and pastel colors as a way to find peace. After moving from Canada to New York City and earning her M.A. at Columbia University, she was supported by other talented artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and Robert Indiana. Martin began her career with exhibitions at Betty Parson's Gallery, and her work quickly traveled internationally from there. Eventually moving to New Mexico, the artist ended her career and cut off all social ties. Martin was represented by Pace Gallery from 1975 and was recently given a retrospective at Tate Modern in 2015.

    View More Works

149

Untitled

1995
Graphite, ink and watercolor on onion skin paper.
11 x 11 in. (27.9 x 27.9 cm).
Signed and dated "a.martin '95" lower right.

Estimate
$80,000 - 120,000 

Contemporary Art Part II

13 Nov 2009
New York