A major retrospective of the work of the celebrated abstract impressionist American artist Agnes Martin has just opened at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Martin, who many considered a minimalist, was a rather complex and intensely private person. Born in Canada, she didn’t in fact starting painting until she was in her 30’s and living in NY in the 1950’s with Ellsworth Kelly as a neighbor. She was quite open about being diagnosed with schizophrenia, but closeted about her homosexuality.
Martin’s works are highly regarded — critically celebrated and held in the permanent collections of museums around the world but best seen in the flesh as they do not photograph well. She has been the subject of 85 solo exhibitions, but this retrospective is the largest one mounted since her death in 2001 at the age of 92.
Agnes Martin @The Guggenheim
1071 5th Ave New York (Between 88th & 89th St)
October 7, 2016–January 11, 2017