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Gallery Text

Martin began studying art in New York in the 1940s, and had her first exhibition in 1958 at the Betty Parsons Gallery, where abstract expressionists Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman also showed their work. In the 1960s she began creating paintings in which she combined delicate, transparent washes of color with lightly drawn pencil grids. Untitled #4, though done later in her career, demonstrates these techniques. Martin’s work became important for minimalism. The tedious labor of hand-drawing the grid and the repeated lines evokes minimalism’s penchant for mechanistic execution and serial structures. Yet the slightly wavering pencil marks, created by dragging a pencil across the bumpy woven canvas, are evidence of the hand’s inability to produce in the manner of a machine. In this way, Martin’s paintings examine the tension between manual and machine labor, a subject that occupied artists during the 1960s and beyond.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1995.42
People
Agnes Martin, American (Maklin, Saskatchewan, Canada 1912 - 2004 Taos, NM)
Title
Untitled #4
Other Titles
Alternate Title: Untitled IV
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
painting
Date
1991
Places
Creation Place: North America, United States
Culture
American
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/226483

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Acrylic and graphite on canvas
Dimensions
183.5 x 183.5 cm (72 1/4 x 72 1/4 in.)
framed: 185.4 x 185.4 x 6 cm (73 x 73 x 2 3/8 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • Signed: on back: A. Martin 1991

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
American Art Foundation, New York New York (through PaceWildenstein Gallery, New York), gift; to Harvard University Art Museums, 1995.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of The American Art Foundation
Copyright
© Estate of Agnes Martin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Accession Year
1995
Object Number
1995.42
Division
Modern and Contemporary Art
Contact
am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • James Cuno, ed., A Decade of Collecting: Recent Acquisitions by the Harvard University Art Museums, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, Mass., Spring 2000), p. 93, ill. (b/w)

Exhibition History

  • Agnes Martin, Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris, 05/16/1992 - 06/20/1992
  • Contemporary Art from the Harvard University Art Museums Collections, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 06/23/2007 - 01/31/2008
  • Re-View: European and American Art Since 1900, Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, 05/03/2011 - 06/01/2013
  • 32Q: 1100 60’s Experiment, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 04/07/2017

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu