Nine Underrated Works by Agnes Martin You Should Know

Feature image: Agnes Martin, Untitled, 1960 © 2025 Estate of Agnes Martin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York via MoMA

Agnes Martin’s paintings embody an extraordinary balance between discipline and emotion. Her art, often described as serene, conceals years of dedication and study beneath its simplicity. While museums and textbooks often focus on her signature grids from the 1960s, many of her earlier and later works reveal a deeper understanding of perception and feeling, creating a sense of harmony and tranquility.

Agnes Martin, born in Saskatchewan in 1912, developed her artistic voice in New Mexico and New York. Her practice grew from an interest in abstract expressionism into a lifelong pursuit of stillness and clarity. Through precise lines, delicate color fields, and quiet repetition, she created a language of peace. The nine works below show how her approach evolved from expressive beginnings into a state of near silence, each painting reflecting her conviction that art can convey joy, innocence, and a profound spiritual order.

In This Rain, Martin created a composition of two softly painted rectangles suspended within a pale ground. The upper form, a cool gray, and the lower, a warm off-white, establish a dialogue between weight and lightness. The painting predates her grid period but already reveals her instinct for balance and repetition. The restrained palette and careful edges suggest atmosphere rather than imagery, like clouds passing through quiet air. Here, Martin transformed abstraction into an emotional landscape, using tone and proportion to evoke a sense of stillness and reflection. This Rain stands as one of her most contemplative early works and a clear precursor to her mature style.

In Untitled (1960), Agnes Martin painted a single imperfect circle suspended on a pale, nearly monochrome ground. The image feels both precise and fragile, balancing mathematical form with human touch. The black outline wavers slightly, revealing the artist’s hand and transforming a symbol of perfection into an expression of vulnerability. This quiet tension between geometry and imperfection became a central theme in her later work. The painting suggests her growing interest in order as a spiritual pursuit rather than a formal system. Through the simplest of means, Martin created an image that radiates calm, completeness, and restraint.

Grey Stone II marks one of Agnes Martin’s earliest fully realized grid compositions. The painting consists of a field of faint graphite lines overlaid with a cool, muted gray wash that appears almost weightless. The subtle patterning creates a sense of vibration as the viewer’s eyes adjust to its delicate rhythm. The surface feels quiet and exacting, yet the irregularities within the grid preserve the artist’s hand. Martin achieved harmony through repetition, transforming line and tone into a meditative experience. This work captures the turning point in her career when geometry became her instrument for expressing stillness and order.

In The Islands, Agnes Martin constructed a field of evenly spaced vertical dots, contained within a soft penciled border. The composition’s precision feels almost architectural, yet its rhythm evokes the natural world. Each mark appears deliberate but alive, creating a quiet pulse across the surface. The pale linen background softens the structure, allowing air and light to circulate within the grid. Martin often compared her process to breathing, and this painting conveys that same steady rhythm. The Islands demonstrates her mastery of repetition as a path toward calm, turning geometry into a meditation on presence and distance.

In Wood I, Agnes Martin deepened her engagement with the grid, refining it into a disciplined, almost devotional form. The work presents a network of thin black lines drawn with quiet precision across a gray, softly textured ground. Along the edges, small red dots introduce a subtle rhythm, breaking the uniformity and guiding the viewer’s gaze inward. The interplay between graphite and pigment creates a surface that feels both exact and alive. Martin approached each line as a breath—measured, patient, and purposeful. Wood exemplifies her pursuit of harmony through repetition and her conviction that beauty can emerge from even the most modest gestures.

Friendship stands apart in Agnes Martin’s career for its luminous gold surface. The painting consists of a meticulously scored grid overlaid on sheets of gold leaf, producing a radiant field that shifts with every change in light. The reflective surface evokes both sacred icons and the materiality of the earth. Although the grid remains precise, the warmth of the gold transforms its austerity into something tender and human. The title introduces emotional resonance, suggesting connection and care through measured structure. In Friendship, Martin fused minimalism with spiritual depth, turning geometry into a quiet expression of affection and trust.

Été translates to “summer,” an apt title for one of Martin’s most vibrant compositions. The saturation of color feels both unusual and deliberate, signaling a brief but radiant departure from her otherwise neutral palette. The structure remains consistent, yet the hue transforms the experience of looking. In Été, Martin demonstrated that serenity can coexist with intensity, achieving emotional balance through the use of color, precision, and quiet repetition. Each intersection is marked by a faint white dot, creating a rhythm that recalls sunlight glinting on water.

Created after her return to painting in the mid-1970s, Untitled (1978) reveals Martin’s renewed sense of clarity and balance. The composition features alternating bands of soft pink and cream, carefully measured and outlined by fine pencil lines. The color feels gentle yet deliberate, bringing warmth to her otherwise neutral vocabulary. Each stripe maintains consistency while allowing for slight variations that affirm the artist’s hand. The result is both controlled and human, combining precision with tenderness. Untitled captures Martin’s quiet confidence during her later years, reflecting her ongoing devotion to harmony, repetition, and beauty through restraint.

Painted at the end of her life, Untitled #22 distills Agnes Martin’s philosophy into its simplest form. Two pale blue bands frame a central field of white, creating a composition that feels weightless and meditative. The balance between structure and openness captures her lifelong pursuit of serenity through repetition and proportion. The work radiates clarity, free from gesture or ornament. The faint brushstrokes and soft edges preserve a sense of humanity within the near-perfect symmetry. Untitled #22 stands as a summation of Martin’s vision, an image of peace, devotion, and quiet transcendence that closes her career with grace.

Agnes Martin’s art continues to challenge our understanding of beauty, order, and emotion in abstraction. Her understated paintings reward patience and careful attention, inviting the viewer to slow down and notice the quiet precision of the hand behind each line. The works gathered here trace a lifetime devoted to the pursuit of balance and serenity. In a world shaped by distraction and excess, Martin’s restraint feels increasingly relevant. Her paintings breathe with silence, light, and rhythm, proving that abstraction can express humanity through the simplest means and that stillness remains one of art’s most potent forms of expression.

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