Editing Agnes Martin (section)

==Artistic style==
In addition to a couple of self-portraits and a few watercolor landscapes, Martin's early works included biomorphic paintings in subdued colors made when the artist had a grant to work in Taos between 1955 and 1957. However, she did her best to seek out and destroy paintings from the years when she was taking her first steps into abstraction.<ref name="Saved From the Artist's Fire"/><ref name=PaceCircle />

Martin praised [[Mark Rothko]] for having "reached zero so that nothing could stand in the way of truth". Following his example Martin also pared down to the most reductive elements to encourage a perception of perfection and to emphasize transcendent reality.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=5147467 |title=Agnes Martin, ''Untitled #1'' (1989) |publisher=[[Christie's]] |location=New York |work=Post War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale |date=November 12, 2008 |access-date=October 6, 2015}}</ref> Her signature style was defined by an emphasis upon line, grids, and fields of extremely subtle color. Particularly in her breakthrough years of the early 1960s, she created 6&nbsp;×&nbsp;6 foot square canvases that were covered in dense, minute and softly delineated graphite grids.<ref name="christies.com">{{cite web |url=http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=4978845 |title=Agnes Martin, ''Loving Love'' (2000) |publisher=[[Christie's]] |location=New York |work=Post War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale |date=November 13, 2007 |access-date=October 6, 2015}}</ref> In the 1966 exhibition ''Systemic Painting'' at the [[Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum]], Martin's grids were therefore celebrated as examples of [[Minimalist art]] and were hung among works by artists including [[Sol LeWitt]], [[Robert Ryman]], and [[Donald Judd]].<ref name="Alloway">{{cite web |url=http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/publications/from-the-archives/items/view/72 |title=Systemic Painting: Catalogue for the Exhibition |author=Alloway, Lawrence |year=1966 |publisher=Guggenheim Museum |access-date=October 6, 2015 |location=New York |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151016075833/http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/publications/from-the-archives/items/view/72 |archive-date=2015-10-16 |url-status=dead}}</ref> While minimalist in form, however, these paintings were quite different in spirit from those of her other minimalist counterparts, retaining small flaws and unmistakable traces of the artist's hand; she shied away from [[intellectualism]], favoring the personal and spiritual. Her paintings, statements, and influential writings often reflected an interest in Eastern philosophy, especially [[Taoism|Taoist]]. Because of her work's added spiritual dimension, which became more and more dominant after 1967, she preferred to be classified as an [[abstract expressionism|abstract expressionist]].<ref name=Stockholm /><ref name=Smithsonian />

Martin worked in only black, white, and brown before moving to New Mexico. The last painting before she abandoned her career, and left New York in 1967, ''Trumpet'', marked a departure in that the single rectangle evolved into an overall grid of rectangles. In this painting the rectangles were drawn in pencil over uneven washes of gray translucent paint.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2003/five-decades |title=Agnes Martin: Five Decades, February 20 – April 26, 2003 |publisher=[[David Zwirner Gallery|Zwirner & Wirth Gallery]] |location=New York |access-date=October 6, 2015}}</ref> In 1973, she returned to art making, and produced a portfolio of 30 serigraphs, ''On a Clear Day''.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.gallery.ca/en/see/collections/artist.php?iartistid=3556 |title=Agnes Martin 1912 - 2004  |publisher=National Gallery of Canada |location=Ottawa |access-date=October 6, 2015}}</ref> During her time in Taos, she introduced light pastel washes to her grids, colors that shimmered in the changing light.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.diacenter.org/exhibitions/introduction/89 |publisher=Dia Art Foundation |title=Exhibition: Agnes Martin long term view |location=New York |access-date=March 28, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110927044855/http://www.diacenter.org/exhibitions/introduction/89 |archive-date=September 27, 2011}}</ref> Later, Martin reduced the scale of her signature 72&nbsp;×&nbsp;72 square paintings to 60&nbsp;×&nbsp;60&nbsp;inches,<ref name="Agnes Martin 1994">{{cite web |url=http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=3918126 |title=Agnes Martin ''Untitled No. 4'' (1994) |publisher=[[Christie's]] |location=New York |work=Post War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale |date=May 14, 2002 |access-date=October 6, 2015}}</ref> and shifted her work to use bands of ethereal color.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/agnes-martin-1583 |title=Agnes Martin 1912–2004: Artist biography |work=Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists |author=Alley, Ronald |year=1981 |page=488 |location=London |access-date=October 6, 2015}}</ref> Another departure was a modification, if not a refinement, of the grid structure, which Martin has used since the late 1950s. In ''Untitled No. 4'' (1994), for example, one viewed the gentle striations of pencil line and primary color washes of diluted acrylic paint blended with gesso. The lines, which encompassed this painting, were not measured by a ruler, but rather intuitively marked by the artist.<ref name="Agnes Martin 1994"/> In the 1990s, symmetry would often give way to varying widths of horizontal bands.

Lawrence Alloway noted that Martin is in the first generation of the Abstract Expressionism style, which is significant and "shows her commitment to exalted subject matter" and her ability to "transform it into the language of painting which gives the works their aura of silent dignity."{{cite quote}}