Lot 149 email save

AGNES MARTIN, Untitled, 1995

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.

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
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.

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