Untitled

In the 1960s, Agnes Martin experimented with formats, materials, and techniques to explore the creative potential of the grid. She covered her canvases with orthogonal lines applied at regular intervals, thereby neutralising any compositional principles. “My paintings do not have any subject, space, or line, or anything else. There is no form”, she stated in 1966. Martin may not have been the first artist to use grids, a modernist form par excellence, but she was the only one to use them systematically in a standard, square format that sublimated the irregularities and tremors of the human gesture in their pursuit of a deeply spiritual perfection.

Dating from this pivotal time, this work on paper is composed of seven black empty rectangles stacked against a background of vertical lines. The cadenced sequence of austere forms generates an optical illusion in which the rectangles seem to float above the plane. Fuelled by the artist’s interest in Taoism and Zen Buddhism as well as by her sensory memories and experiences of the wide-open landscapes of her native Saskatchewan in Canada, Martin's enigmatic works elicit a meditation on the perfection of natural forms.

The Pinault Collection showed this work for the first at the Icones exhibition at Punta della Dogana in Venice in 2023