Like many other artists of her time, Canadian-born Agnes Martin spent formative years in New York City. She lived and worked in Manhattan’s Financial District, on Coenties Slip, alongside many well-known figures from the midcentury art scene. Some, like the artists Lenore Tawney and Chryssa, as well as the art dealer Betty Parsons, became her romantic partners. Martin abruptly left New York in 1967. After traveling all over the United States and Canada, she settled in New Mexico, where she would remain for the rest of her life.

This painting dates from the end of her career, when she had moved to a retirement home in Taos, New Mexico. The grids of softly made pencil marks and diluted paint are signature elements of her work at the time. Though often thought of as a Minimalist artist, she preferred to be seen as an Abstract Expressionist due to the personal meanings she saw as present in her abstract work.

Image Description: A painting on a softly delineated graphite grid overlaid with four horizontal colored blocks. The colors alternate between two subtle hues, blue and pink, with a very thin strip of white dividing the painting in half horizontally. The acrylic is applied delicately, and the blank white canvas is visible through the paint.