Agnes Martin was one of America’s foremost abstract painters with a career that spanned nearly five decades. Her works from the 1960s are characterised by large, grid-based compositions of delicate horizontal and vertical lines. Martin's later paintings are characterised by washes of ethereal colour painted in horizontal bands divided by delicate pencil lines. Martin wrote eloquently about what she considered the emotive content underlying the apparent reticence and austerity of form in her paintings, calling them 'meditations on innocence, beauty, happiness and love'.
This conversation at Tate follows the publication of Phaidon's extensive monograph, which throws new light on the artist's life and work. Agnes Martin: Paintings, Writings, Remembrances includes facsimiles of her writings, an introduction by Arne Glimcher, insightful remembrances of his visits to her studio in New Mexico and extracts from their extensive correspondence.Â
Arne Glimcher is the founder and Chairman of Pace Gallery and the author of Agnes Martin: Paintings, Writings, Remembrances (Phaidon, 2012). Frances Morris is Head of Collections (International Art) at Tate. The conversation will be chaired by Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate.
