Agnes Martin Signed Abstract OOC for Auction at 888 Auctions on Jan 31, 2019

Agnes Martin Signed American-Canadian Abstract OOC – January 31, 2019

Oil on canvas, stretched and framed. Featuring grid lines. Signed A. Martin on the lower left corner on verso in pencil. 27 x 52 cm (10.6 x 20.5 inches). PROVENANCE: Southern Ontario estate

Click Here to view Lot #60 – Agnes Martin Signed American-Canadian Abstract OOC – January 31, 2019

Agnes Martin

Agnes Martin (1912-2004) was an American-Canadian painter known for her pared-down geometric abstractions. In pale swathes of color lined with pencil, Martin’s art emerged out of the ethos of Abstract Expressionism while preceding Minimalism’s sparse intensity.

Despite the formal rigor of Martin’s practice, she was not striving for perfection—rather, influenced by Taoist and other eastern philosophies, she felt her art was a reflection of the patterns of nature. As a result, Martin titled many of her abstract works after natural phenomena, such as White Flower (1960) or Night Sea (1963). “Nature is like parting a curtain, you go into it. I want to draw a certain response like this,” she once stated. “My paintings are about merging, about formlessness.”

Born on March 22, 1912 in Macklin, Canada. Afterwards, she moved to New York to study art education at the Columbia University Teachers College in the 1940s. Later sharing a studio building with Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Indiana, Lenore Tawney, and others in Coenties Slip in Lower Manhattan, she became absorbed in natural phenomena while also suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

Consequently, she left the city for the relative isolation of New Mexico in 1968, living and working out of a self-made adobe home for the remainder of her life. Martin died on December 16, 2004 in Taos, NM at the age of 92.

A major retrospective exhibition was held at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2016. Today, her works are held in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Tate Gallery in London, among others.

Auction Overview

Richmond Hill, ON – 393 fresh to market items will be available to the discerning buyers and collectors in 888 Auctions’ January 17th auction featuring the finest in MODERN PAINTINGS, JEWELRY & ASIAN ANTIQUES 2019-01-31. Taking place in the afternoon at 2 PM (EST), bidders will be competing against one another over a variety of items on display.