On view are 13 rarely seen paintings and one work on paper from 1957 to 1965, and nine paintings from 1999 to 2004 that demonstrate how Agnes Martin’s work came full circle in the last years of her life with her decision to reengage the geometric shapes and irregular grids that characterize the paintings of 1959 and 1960.

PaceWildenstein has represented Martin since 1975, when the composition of her work was already based on a regular grid. In the intervening years a subtler grid evolved where her brushstrokes and horizontal lines formed the composition. While many of the works on view in Closing the Circle are painted in her signature square format: 72” x 72” or 60” x 60”, five vertical canvases of triangles and rectangles from the late 1950s are also included in this exhibition.

Although Martin is known to have been a painter since the mid 1930s, virtually no work survives from before 1957. This is due entirely to the artist’s decision to destroy everything she made prior to her discovery of geometric abstraction. The early work included in this exhibition represent the first examples of Martin’s use of geometry and the grid to create the framework for her quest for beauty and perfection.

Martin culminated her final cycle of paintings, which had begun in 1993, when the artist created seven 5’-square blue canvases, which now hang in The Harwood Museum in Taos, N.M. Over the course of that decade, the artist allowed the work to become increasingly colorful and complex, finally reaching the stage exemplified by the work in this exhibition. Here the same forms and compositions that led the artist into four decades of meditations on beauty serve to finish that process.

Since her first solo exhibition in 1958, Martin’s work has been the subject of more than 85 solo shows and two retrospectives, including the survey Agnes Martin, organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, which later traveled to Milwaukee, Miami, Houston and Madrid (1992-94) and Agnes Martin: Paintings and Drawings 1974-1990, organized by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, with subsequent venues in France and Germany (1991-92).

In 2002, The Menil Collection, Houston, mounted Agnes Martin: The Nineties and Beyond. That same year, The Harwood Museum of Art at the University of New Mexico, Taos, organized Agnes Martin: Paintings from 2001, as well as a symposium honoring Martin on the occasion of her 90th birthday.

In addition to participating in an international array of group exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale (1997, 1980, 1976), the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial (1995, 1977), and Documenta, Kassel, Germany (1972), Martin has been the recipient of multiple honors including the Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of the Women’s Caucus for Art of the College Art Association (2005); the Governor’s Award for Excellence and Achievement in the Arts given by Governor Gary Johnson, Santa Fe, New Mexico (1998); the National Medal of Arts awarded by President Clinton and the National Endowment for the Arts (1998); the Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement by the College Art Association (1998); the Golden Lion for Contribution to Contemporary Art at the Venice Biennale.