Albuquerque author Christina Rosenberger will speak about artist Agnes Martin (1912-2004), an iconic figure in 20th century art with a continuing artistic legacy in New Mexico.
Canadian born, Martin started to make a name for herself in the New York art scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but in 1967, abandoned her career for a reclusive life in the New Mexico desert. She did not return to her work for nearly a decade. Rosenberger’s talk focuses on Martin’s formative years in New Mexico and the decisive impact New Mexico had on Martin’s iconic grid paintings in the early 1960s.
Rosenberger’s new book, Drawing the Line: The Early Work of Agnes Martin (University of California Press, 2016), explores how the rapidly evolving creative processes and pictorial solutions Martin developed between 1940 and 1967 define all her subsequent art. It also traces New Mexico’s role as a vibrant creative center in the middle of the 20th century, tracing the networks of art, artists, and information that moved between New Mexico, New York, and California in the postwar period.
