The Easel

Holding Onto Form And Passion: Agnes Martin’s Guggenheim Retrospective Reveals How Her Self-Incarceration Produced A Visual Utopia

Martin was tempted back to New York in 1957 by the offer of an exhibition. She left after a decade, having worked alongside other great American artists. Was she most influenced by abstract expressionism or minimalism? For Martin, this question was of little interest:  “I paint about perfection that transcends what you see — the perfection that only exists in awareness”. An interview with her biographer is here.