PopUp Painting’s ‘artist of the week’ is Agnes Martin.
Martin is most recognised for her evocative paintings marked out in subtle pencil lines and pale colour washes. Although restrained, her style was underpinned by her deep conviction in the emotive and expressive power of art. The artist chose spiritual inspiration over intellectual inspiration to create her work and for this reason became a key figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement. Martin was one of the few female artists to gain acclaim within the male dominated Abstraction movement of the 50’s and 60’s. Her peers included Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Barnett Newman.
In 1967, after being based in New York City for a number of years, Martin abandoned the city and went in search of solitude and silence. The artist finally set herself up in New Mexico. Here she began working within tightly prescribed limits on her practice. During this period the artist focused on meticulously rendered grids and repeated stripes. She was known to remake a painting several times in order to constantly improve on it.
Agnes Martin died in 2004 after a career that spanned almost 5 decades.
We will be featuring her wonderful work on our Facebook and Twitter pages all week, but in the meantime here are some of our favourite works by the artist:
