Untitled

Inscriptions

Inscribed, in graphite, upper center: Top; inscribed, in graphite, lower left: 77 [inventory number, Robert Elkon Gallery]; signed and dated, in pen and ink, on frame backing: a. martin / 1967

Label

When I first made a grid, I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees, and then a grid came into my mind and I thought it represented innocence, and I still do, and so I painted it and then I was satisfied. I thought, “This is my vision.” -- Agnes Martin

Grids can represent ideas and are frequently used to make complex information understandable. Martin draws straight parallel lines carefully and methodically until the process of creating the grid resembles meditation. She was inspired early on by the ideas of Zen Buddhism and landed on making grids as her personal form of contemplative art making. She even studied Zen with the famous author D. T. Suzuki while she was a student at Columbia University. Her grids became a way to go beyond the visible and explore the philosophical realm.

She eventually returned to New Mexico and there became an influential figure in Minimalism.

From the 2025 exhibition Always Already: Abstraction in the United States, curated by John Stomberg, Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961 Director; Jami Powell, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Indigenous Art; and Amelia Kahl, Barbara C. and Harvey P. Hood 1918 Senior Curator of Academic Programing

Course History

SART 15, Drawing I, Colleen Randall, Winter 2013

SART 20, SART 71, Drawing II, Drawing III, Colleen Randall, Fall 2012

SART 20, SART 71, Drawing II, Drawing III, Jennifer Caine, Spring 2013

SART 15, Drawing I, Gerald Auten, Spring 2012

SART 15, Drawing I, Colleen Randall, Fall 2013

SART 20, SART 71, Drawing II, Drawing III, Colleen Randall, Fall 2013

PHIL 23, The Philosophy of Art, John Kulvicki, Winter 2014

SART 20, SART 71, Drawing II/III, Colleen Randall, Fall 2014

SART 15, Drawing I, Colleen Randall, Spring 2015

WRIT 7 , Religion and Literature: Re-visioning the Natural, Nancy Crumbine, Spring 2015

SART 15, Drawing I, Viktor Witkowski, Winter 2019

SART 20/SART 71, Drawing II/Drawing III, Colleen Randall, Fall 2019

SART 15.01, Drawing I, Viktor Witkowski, Winter 2020

SART 20, SART 71, Drawing II,III, Jack Wilson, Fall 2022

Music 3.07, The Minimalist Impulse, Victoria Aschheim - OPEN HOURS, Winter 2023

Music 3.07, The Minimalist Impulse, Victoria Aschheim - OPEN HOURS 1, Winter 2023

Music 3.07, The Minimalist Impulse, Victoria Aschheim - OPEN HOURS 2, Winter 2023

Studio Art 15.02, Drawing I, Viktor Witkowski, Summer 2024

Exhibition History

Always Already: Abstraction in the United States, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 26,2025.

Marks of Distinction: Two Hundred Years of American Drawings and Watercolors from the Hood Museum of Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 29-May 29, 2005; Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids, Michigan, June 24-September 11, 2005; National Academy Museum, New York City, New York, October 20-December 31, 2005.

The Expanding Grid, Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 7-August 27, 2012.

The Object World, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, ARTH2, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, February 5-March 15, 2015.

Publication History

Barbara J. MacAdam, Marks of Distinction, Two Hundred Years of American Drawings and Watercolors from the Hood Museum of Art, Manchester, Vermont: Hudson Hills Press, 2005, pp. 25, 39, 42, 216, 274-275, ill. p. 217, no. 77.

James A. W. Heffernan, Cultivating Picturacy: Visual Art and Verbal Interventions, Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006, ill, p. 289, fig. 13.1

Brian Kennedy, Sean Scully: The Art of the Stripe, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2008, ill. p. 68.

Brian P. Kennedy and Emily Shubert Burke, Modern and Contemporary Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2009 p.172, no.148.

Provenance

The artist; Robert Elkon Gallery, New York; Pace Gallery, New York; private collection, New York; private collection, Switzerland; represented by James Kelly Contemporary Inc. (art dealer), New York, by 2003; sold to present collection, 2003.

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