Agnes Martin: Life and Work

Life

Reemergence in Cuba, New Mexico

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Martin at her house near Cuba, New Mexico, 1974. Photography by Gianfranco Gorgoni. Image from the A...

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The period of travel that followed Martin's departure from New York and the interruption to her painting career have acquired the status of myth. There is a fair amount of mystery about where she went and how she spent her time during those years. What is known is that for roughly the first year and a half, she was on the move, driving and camping in the Pacific Northwest, in both the United States and Canada. By the end of 1968, she had resettled.

—Nancy Princenthal on the book Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art

No one is exactly sure where she went. Like Huckleberry Finn, she lit out for the territories, travelling off-grid, into open space. She re-emerged at a cafe and filling station in Cuba, New Mexico in 1968, pulling in and asking the manager if he knew of any land for rent. By chance, his wife had a property available, and so, at the age of 56, Martin moved up to a remote mesa, 20 miles across dirt roads from the nearest highway. No electricity, no phone, no neighbours, there was not even a shelter to move into. For the first few months, she focused her energy on building, working from scratch and mostly alone. She made a one-room dwelling out of adobe bricks she shaped herself, and then a log-cabin studio from trees she cut down with a chainsaw. It was in this latter space that she began to inch towards art again, first prints, then drawings, then the luminous work of her maturity.

—Olivia Laing, on The Guardian

Agnes Martin: the artist mystic who disappeared into the desert, by Olivia Laing

In Taos, New Mexico. She was living on a mesa by herself. In the winter it flooded all around so she would be in for two to three months unable to get anywhere because the river was raging. She would grow tomatoes and preserve them, and would have shelves full of them. She would only eat one thing while she was painting so that nothing distracted her. She said, ‘I can’t have any distractions, I can’t even have a cat. I don’t have any chickens either.’ It was a life in art, and it was a very serious endeavour. She was almost a preacher for the beauty within oneself, the order of perfection that she said did not exist in the real world. It was a very intense life. Towards the end she became much more outgoing and personable, but in the early years she was very much a recluse.

—Arne Glimcher, her biographer, talking about Agnes Martin

Agnes Martin in the mesas near Cuba, New Mexico. 1974 Photo © 2018 Gianfranco Gorgoni. Photo from th...

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Adobe studio and house built by Agnes Martin in Galisteo, New Mexico, beginning in 1977. Photo: Joan...

The House that Agnes Martin Built, by Joanna Weber

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Agnes Martin: Life and Work

This timespace tells the story of the life and art of Agnes Martin.

Destroyed artworks New Mexico Mountain Landscape, Taos Untitled (Landscape South of Santa Fe, NM) Nude Untitled Personnages Untitled The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden The Bluebird Mid-Winter Untitled Dream of night sailing Autumn Watch Window Harbor I Wheat Desert Rain Untitled Untitled Night and Day Kali The Laws The Spring Untitled Untitled Untitled Lamp Earth Untitled Cow Untitled White Flower Mountain Untitled Untitled This Rain The Islands Little Sister The Wall #2 Tremolo The Wave Milk River Friendship Night Sea Wood I Stars The Tree White Stone Stone Wood Red Bird The Beach Garden Red Bird The Peach Petal Morning Drift of Summer The Harvest The City Play Mountain I The Field Tundra The Untroubled Mind On a Clear Day Lecture at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania Untitled #12 Untitled #5 Gabriel Untitled Untitled Untitled #14 Rubber Stamp Portfolio Untitled #5 Untitled Untitled #1 Untitled #9 Fiesta Untitled #5 Untitled #6 Untitled 1990 series Untitled #5 Untitled #5 Untitled #10 Untitled #9 With My Back To The World Untitled #7 Writings Where Babies Come From Loving Love Happy Holiday I Love The Whole World Faraway Love Innocent Love Perfect Happiness Innocent Happiness Happiness Innocent Living Contentment Love Benevolence Gratitude Untitled #20 Untitled #16 Untitled #17 Homage to Life The Sea Untitled
First New York exhibition Exhibition at Betty Parsons Section Eleven gallery Final exhibition at Betty Parsons Gallery First exhibition in Robert Elkon's gallery Kunstmuseum in Winterthur, Switzerland Whitney Museum retrospective Tate Modern retrospective Guggenheim Museum retrospective
Foundation of the Cornish School of Music John Cage taught at Cornish Abstract Expressionism Betty Parsons opens her gallery Pollock's earliest drip paintings Newman's first zip compositions D.T. Suzuki's lectures at Columbia Ad Reinhardt Betty Parsons visits Taos Lenore Tawney exhibition Chryssa's first solo exhibition
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