Online Agnes Martin Beneath Thought and Idea Aug 18 – Sep 6, 2022 Through her meditative, radiant abstractions, Agnes Martin, one of the most important figures of 20th century art history and a progenitor of Minimalism, sought to deepen her understanding of painting’s underlying essence, pursuing a vision of beauty that is untethered to any single emotion or subject. The painting Untitled #2 (1992), the focus of this online exhibition, reflects Martin’s philosophical, spiritual approach to art making and her intense interest in the sensorial effects of line and color. Read More Agnes Martin in Studio, Cuba, New Mexico Agnes Martin With Her Woodburning Stove Toward freedom is the direction that the artist takes. Artwork comes straight through a free mind—an open mind. Agnes Martin Agnes Martin, Untitled #2, 1992, acrylic and graphite on linen, 72 x 72" (182.9 x 182.9 cm) Learn More Close modal Agnes Martin Untitled #2 1992 acrylic and graphite on linen 72 x 72" (182.9 x 182.9 cm) Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back “When you stand in front of an Agnes Martin painting, you reconnect to that basic truth that's inside of you,” Pace President and CEO Marc Glimcher, who had a long and meaningful friendship with Martin, says in a new film produced on the occasion of Frieze Seoul. Read More Using painstaking mathematical calculations, Martin created meticulous abstract compositions often comprising intricate grids or bands of alternating colors. The artist, who spent much of her life in New Mexico, maintained an ascetic, largely solitary existence for many years—this informed her painterly explorations of space, form, and metaphysics. Read More Photograph of Agnes Martin with Jack Youngerman and Ellsworth Kelly, 1957 © 1991 Hans Namuth Estate, Courtesy Center for Creative Photography “Toward freedom is the direction that the artist takes,” Martin once said. “Artwork comes straight through a free mind—an open mind. Absolute freedom is possible. We gradually give up things that disturb us and cover our mind. And with each relinquishment, we feel better.”Martin was born in 1912 in Saskatchewan, Canada, where she also spent her childhood. Having studied painting at the University of New Mexico, Martin established herself in the New York art world in the 1950s. During this period, she associated with fellow artists like Jasper Johns, Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, and Robert Rauschenberg, and she presented her first solo exhibition with Betty Parsons Gallery in 1958. Read More Agnes Martin, Untitled #2 (detail), 1992 © Agnes Martin / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York Her career accelerated in the 1960s, when she was included in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as a seminal exhibition of minimalist art co-organized by Robert Smithson and Virginia Dwan at Dwan Gallery.Amid a hiatus from painting—and the limelight of New York—that Martin initiated in 1967, the artist had her first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1973. The show, titled On a Clear Day, featured 30 screen prints based on drawings produced in 1972. It was also during the 1970s that Martin began a decades long friendship with Pace Founder and Chairman Arne Glimcher. The artist had her first solo exhibition with Pace Gallery in 1975, when she presented new paintings with horizontal and vertical bands of pastel pinks, blues, and yellow. For the next three decades, Martin would continue explorations of this kind, using acrylic, watercolor, and graphite to express absolute truth through pure abstraction. Read More Agnes Martin and Arne Glimcher in Front of Airstream Trailer Enclosed in Adobe The Studio Under Construction Although her work superficially seems to belong to the history of Reductionism and specifically Minimalism, Agnes considered herself an expressionist and her painting the abstract expression of positive inner states of existence. Arne Glimcher Arne Glimcher in Agnes Martin’s Studio Agnes Martin and Arne Glimcher in her new truck As Arne Glimcher writes in his book Agnes Martin: Paintings, Writings, Remembrances, “Although her work superficially seems to belong to the history of Reductionism and specifically Minimalism, Agnes considered herself an expressionist and her painting the abstract expression of positive inner states of existence.”Arne Glimcher would champion Martin’s work over the course of the subsequent years, visiting her in New Mexico and closely following her practice. Arne’s son Marc also cultivated a relationship with Martin that began in the early 1980s, when he spent a week with her in Galisteo, New Mexico. Read More Agnes Martin, Untitled #2, 1992, acrylic and graphite on linen, 72 x 72" (182.9 x 182.9 cm) Learn More Close modal Agnes Martin Untitled #2 1992 acrylic and graphite on linen 72 x 72" (182.9 x 182.9 cm) Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Agnes Martin, Untitled #2 (detail), 1992 © Agnes Martin / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York “Agnes believed that inspiration came in silence,” Marc Glimcher says of his first visit with Martin. “And that everyone should spend time in silence, that saying unnecessary things would detract from one’s level of inspiration. So, it wasn’t exactly a silent retreat, but it was pretty close.”Untitled #2 was created in 1992, some ten years after Marc Glimcher’s first meeting with Martin. At this point, Martin was in her 80s and living in Taos, New Mexico. During the 1990s, the artist’s practice underwent a significant shift. Following her work on a series of powerful, intense gray and white paintings in the 1980s, the artist made two paintings, one of them being Untitled #2, filled with color. The vivacity and vibrancy of these two works are also reflected in the series of colorful paintings that Martin began in 1994 and continued for ten years, until her death in 2004. This hugely creative period of her life and career was catalyzed, in part, by Untitled #2, the last of her six-by-six-foot square paintings. Read More Agnes Martin, Untitled #2 (detail), 1992 © Agnes Martin / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York The repeating blue, pink, orange, and white horizontal bands of Untitled #2 produce mesmeric, transcendent effects. As is characteristic of Martin’s paintings, Untitled #2—which has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Tate Modern in London, Pace Gallery in New York as part of the 2010 show 50 Years at Pace and the 2018 presentation Agnes Martin / Navajo Blankets, and other institutions—possesses a rhythmic, phenomenological quality. The colors in the work seem to intermingle and fluctuate before the viewer’s eyes, moving through a gentle choreography across the canvas.“Just as Martin’s paintings are committed to the practical good of communicating with viewers, they are visibly reliant on her own manual labor; the slow inscription of precisely drawn and painted webs and bands can be compared, with not too big a stretch, to Zen acolytes’ sweeping of monastery floors,” art historian Nancy Princenthal writes of the inherent spirituality of Martin’s process in her 2015 biography of the artist. “The humility of the practice is its own reward.” Read More When you stand in front of an Agnes Martin painting, you reconnect to that basic truth that's inside of you. Marc Glimcher Agnes Martin’s Exhibitions at Pace Agnes Martin, New Paintings, Mar 1 – Apr 1, 1975, Pace Gallery 1/21 Agnes Martin, Recent Paintings, May 1 – Jun 5, 1976, Pace Gallery 2/21 Agnes Martin, Watercolors, Mar 25 – Apr 22, 1978, Pace Gallery 3/21 Agnes Martin, Paintings, Sep 21 – Oct 13, 1979, Pace Gallery 4/21 Agnes Martin, 1980 Paintings, Nov 14 – Dec 13, 1980, Pace Gallery 5/21 Agnes Martin, Paintings, Jan 20 – Feb 11, 1984, Pace Gallery 6/21 Agnes Martin, New Paintings, Jan 18 – Feb 16, 1985, Pace Gallery 7/21 Agnes Martin, New Paintings, Jan 20 – Feb 11, 1989, Pace Gallery 8/21 Agnes Martin, Recent Paintings, Dec 7, 1990 – Jan 12, 1991, Pace Gallery 9/21 Agnes Martin, Recent Paintings, Dec 6, 1991 – Jan 4, 1992, Pace Gallery 10/21 Agnes Martin, Recent Paintings, Feb 17 – Mar 18, 1995, Pace Gallery 11/21 Agnes Martin, New Paintings, Jan 10 – Feb 3, 1996, Pace Gallery 12/21 Agnes Martin, New Drawings and Watercolors, Mar 28 – Apr 27, 1996, Pace Gallery 13/21 Agnes Martin, Recent Paintings, Jan 16 – Feb 15, 1997, Pace Gallery 14/21 Agnes Martin, New Paintings, Mar 27 – Apr 25, 1998, Pace Gallery 15/21 Agnes Martin, Recent Paintings, Apr 27 – Jun 10, 2000, Pace Gallery 16/21 Agnes Martin, Recent Paintings, Jan 10 – Apr 24, 2003, Pace Gallery 17/21 Agnes Martin, Homage to Life, May 4 – Jul 2, 2004, Pace Gallery 18/21 Agnes Martin, Closing the Circle, Early and Late, Feb 10 – Mar 4, 2006, Pace Gallery 19/21 Agnes Martin, The 80's: Grey Paintings, Sep 16 – Oct 29, 2011, Pace Gallery 20/21 Agnes Martin, The Distillation of Color, May 5 – Jun 26, 2021, Pace Gallery 21/21 Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Carousel slide 5 Carousel slide 6 Carousel slide 7 Carousel slide 8 Carousel slide 9 Carousel slide 10 Carousel slide 11 Carousel slide 12 Carousel slide 13 Carousel slide 14 Carousel slide 15 Carousel slide 16 Carousel slide 17 Carousel slide 18 Carousel slide 19 Carousel slide 20 Untitled #2 is considered one of Martin’s most pivotal works, exemplifying her dedication to articulating a mysterious, transcendent state of mind—or state of being—through seemingly simple, repeated forms. Through this painting, Martin made visible an elusive and intangible existential truth unbound by time, place, or experience. Read More Agnes Martin, Untitled #2, 1992, acrylic and graphite on linen, 72 x 72" (182.9 x 182.9 cm) Learn More Close modal Agnes Martin Untitled #2 1992 acrylic and graphite on linen 72 x 72" (182.9 x 182.9 cm) Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back To inquire about this work, please contact us at inquiries@pacegallery.com. Past, Agnes Martin, Beneath Thought and Idea, Aug 18, 2022