Untitled #3 無題 #3

Agnes Martin was born in Canada, and after moving to the U.S., preferred to spend her time in the West. Her early works were landscapes. Then she started to produce abstract works with organic forms reminiscent of natural elements, and around 1960, moved on to geometric abstraction. By 1964, she was drawing grids and horizontal lines with pencil upon the painted canvas. The resulting works, having a geometric surface, tend to be discussed in relation to Minimalism of the day. But Martin was an artist who considered her paintings as a means of communicating transcendental perfection and spirituality, and in that sense, was closer to the Abstract Expressionist painters Newman and Rothko. In this painting, the surface is finished with gesso, the material usually employed in sizing. The pencil lines emphasizes the rough grains of the surface and makes its materiality more notable. Yet, when viewed from a greater distance, the regulary drawn pencil lines have wavers created by the weaves of the canvas and uneven layerings of gesso, and this generates a vibration within the square surface. In this way, the painting, besides providing a horizontal structure that is an essential element in landscape paintings, becomes a vessel for the emotions a person holds toward nature.