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PETER BLUM AGNES MARTIN ‘WORKS ON PAPER’

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NEW YORK CITY — Peter Blum Gallery announces an exhibition of Agens Martin’s “Works on Paper,” January 18–March 15, at Peter Blum SoHo, 99 Wooster Street. The exhibition includes more than 20 drawings and watercolors from 1960 to 2004, including the last drawing she made in 2004. Also on view is the print portfolio “On a Clear Day,” an important group of 30 screen prints from 1973.

The exhibition looks at the development of Martin’s work, from her earliest studies of abstraction, to her introduction of color and finally to her last drawing.

In the late 1950s Martin’s landscapes and biomorphic Surrealist works transformed into abstraction and what would eventually become her signature examination of rectangular grids within a square format. Her work ranges from early tight grids to the opening up of forms to wider rectangles. Martin moved to New Mexico in 1967 and abandoned painting. When she resumed her work around 1974, the earlier primarily black and white palette modified to include monochromatic washes of subtle pastel colors.

While Martin’s abstract repetitive forms have been associated with Minimalist style, she preferred her work to be characterized as Abstract Expressionist due to its more personal and spiritual nature. Inspired by emerging concepts of Taoism and Zen Buddism in the 1950s, Martin sought a style that transcended the material world and spoke more of the mind and the experience of the sublime.

For more information, www.peterblumgallery.com or 212-343-0441.