Agnes Martin, Happy Holiday 1999. ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. © estate of Agnes Martin.
Contemplate the abstract paintings of Agnes Martin which reflect on perfection, beauty and spirituality
Agnes Martin was a key figure in the male-dominated field of abstract art in the USA. In the 1950s and 1960s her work was often associated with abstract expressionism and minimalism. However, Martin’s methods were different. In her meticulous, hand-painted artworks, ordered geometry and imperfection co-existed.
The paintings in this room consist of horizontal bands of colour, divided by delicate pencil lines. The bands initially appear uniform, but on closer inspection, faint brushstrokes and pools of paint emerge. These marks give the artworks a hand-made feel, undermining the rigid geometry of the composition. As Martin said, ‘the work is about perfection as we are aware of it in our minds but... the paintings are very far from being perfect – completely removed in fact – even as we ourselves are.'
Martin’s work was influenced by Zen Buddhism and Chinese Tao philosophy. Her paintings explore the inner emotional world and the human desire for peace and serenity. She considered art to be a transcendent experience. She explained, ‘Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not just in the eye. It is in the mind. It is our positive response to life’.
ARTIST ROOMS is a touring collection of over 1,600 works of modern and contemporary art. The collection is displayed across the UK in solo exhibitions that showcase the work of 42 major international artists.
Tate Modern
Natalie Bell Building Level 2 East
Room 8
1 February 2022 – 24 September 2024
Free
Anwar Jalal Shemza, Meem Two 1967
Shemza’s practice is built on the geometry seen in Indian textiles and Islamic architecture from the Mughal Empire found throughout Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. He uses circles and squares to create infinite configurations inspired by Arabic and Persian calligraphy. Shemza said, ‘My work is based on the simplification of the three-dimensional solid, architectural reality of the decorative element of calligraphy.’ Meem Two references the letter meem in Urdu (M in English), the basis for a series of compositions made in the 1960s.
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artworks in ARTIST ROOMS: Agnes Martin
Saloua Raouda Choucair, Poem of Nine Verses 1966–8
In the early 1960s, Choucair began creating what she called ‘sculptural poems’ using interlocking forms that can be rearranged in various formations. Poem of Nine Verses is influenced by Sufi poetry, Islamic and modernist architecture, and geometric abstraction. Each aluminium piece can stand alone, like a verse in a poem, but also forms a unified structure. In creating this work, the artist ‘wanted rhythm like the poetic meter, to be at once more independent and interlinked, and to have lines like meanings.’
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artworks in ARTIST ROOMS: Agnes Martin
Ibrahim El-Salahi, Untitled 1967
El-Salahi combines African and Arab cultural motifs with elements of Arabic calligraphy. Here, strange animal and plant-like forms, faces, and skeletons emerge from the broken calligraphic lines and morph into mask-like, totemic figures. In the wake of Sudan’s independence from colonialism, El-Salahi looked to his local environment for inspiration. He developed a distinctive visual language later identified as the ‘Khartoum School’. He stated, ‘I wrote letters and words that did not mean a thing. Then ... I had to break down the bone of the letter’.
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artworks in ARTIST ROOMS: Agnes Martin
Etel Adnan, Key Signs 2017
Key Signs is one of several leporellos – accordion-pleat folding books – created by Adnan. She described working in this format as ‘like writing a river’, linking abstract painting to written expression. The work becomes a vibrant, expansive landscape when open but closes into a small notebook. It symbolises Adnan’s transcultural journey from her Lebanese-Syrian beginnings to her later life in California and Paris from the 1950s onwards.
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artworks in ARTIST ROOMS: Agnes Martin
Pierre Alechinsky, The Night 1952
Alechinsky was a prominent figure in the CoBrA artist group, known for their fondness for handwriting in art. He also admired the fluid brushwork and gestural freedom of Japanese calligraphers. With its twists of white on black, The Night evidences the impact of East Asian calligraphy on his practice as he moved between brush to pen and created his works directly on the floor. Alechinsky also collaborated with Christian Dotrement, shown nearby, on works that directly reference the visual structures of manuscript paintings.
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artworks in ARTIST ROOMS: Agnes Martin
Parviz Tanavoli, Poet and Bird 1974
Returning to Iran from Europe in the 1960s, Tanavoli encountered the country’s resistance to western figurative art. He began incorporating symbols, colloquialisms, and calligraphic elements into his work. Tanavoli’s extensive collection and research on Iranian artefacts, such as carpets, richly inform his artistic output. An avid collector, he was also interested in locks, objects believed to have protective powers, and religious posters. The fragmented forms in his prints often originate from these objects. Many of Tanavoli’s works reference Persian poetry and popular religious practices.
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artworks in ARTIST ROOMS: Agnes Martin
André Masson, Kitchen-maids 1962
In the mid-1920s, Masson joined surrealist artists who pursued psychic automatism, a technique to express creativity without conscious control. Masson’s 1923 automatic drawings foreshadowed the group’s founder André Breton’s later manifesto on automatic writing. Kitchen-maids exemplifies this process with its loose squiggles reminiscent of east Asian calligraphy. Masson was well-versed in Chinese calligraphy and was particularly fond of Thuluth script. This work’s script-like lines and sense of an all-over aesthetic echo the ink ‘calligrams’ Masson created in the 1940s using a bamboo pen.
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artworks in ARTIST ROOMS: Agnes Martin
Mohammed Melehi, Casa 1970
A common abbreviation for Casablanca, Casa features Melehi’s signature ‘wave’ motif, partly inspired by the curves of Arabic calligraphy. Its dynamic, flame-like composition evokes a cityscape. As a professor at the Casablanca Art School (1964–69), Melehi sought to decolonise its academic framework, looking to other interdisciplinary models like the Bauhaus. Alongside Farid Belkahia, Mohammed Chabâa, and others, he developed a modern abstract language by reclaiming Morocco’s visual heritage. Casa also reflects the influence of abstract painting trends from New York, where Melehi lived in the early 1960s.
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artworks in ARTIST ROOMS: Agnes Martin
Paul Klee, Ships in the Dark 1927
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artworks in ARTIST ROOMS: Agnes Martin
Christian Dotremont, [no title] 1975–6
This work reflects Dotremont’s interest in the relationship between written language and visual arts. In the 1950s, he created word paintings with Pierre Alechinsky, who was also part of the CoBrA group. It exemplifies his style of ‘logograms’ or drawings meant to achieve the ‘unity of verbal-graphic inspiration’. These freely drawn poems are divorced from the need for readability or legibility of writing. He looked to Sumerian, Japanese, Arabic, and Indian scripts to balance drawing and writing. The bottom right corner of the page features a poem, while the rest of the space is dedicated to the visual counterpart of the text.
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artworks in ARTIST ROOMS: Agnes Martin
Parviz Tanavoli, Poet Squeezing Lemon 1974
Returning to Iran from Europe in the 1960s, Tanavoli encountered the country’s resistance to western figurative art. He began incorporating symbols, colloquialisms, and calligraphic elements into his work. Tanavoli’s extensive collection and research on Iranian artefacts, such as carpets, richly inform his artistic output. An avid collector, he was also interested in locks, objects believed to have protective powers, and religious posters. The fragmented forms in his prints often originate from these objects. Many of Tanavoli’s works reference Persian poetry and popular religious practices.
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artworks in ARTIST ROOMS: Agnes Martin
Mark Tobey, Northwest Drift 1958
Northwest Drift is a meditative response to Seattle’s grey and hazy landscape. Yet, as Tobey once remarked, ‘The Orient has been the greatest influence’ of his life. In 1918, he converted to the Baha’i faith and sought to explore the spiritual in his art and an alternative to surrealism’s automatism. His interest in calligraphy began during his eastern Mediterranean trip in 1926. After studying calligraphy and practising meditation at a Zen monastery near Kyoto in 1934, he developed his signature ‘white writing’ style. Built on thousands of interlaced white lines, this technique forms a calligraphic mesh on the surface.
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artworks in ARTIST ROOMS: Agnes Martin
Li Yuan-chia, Calligraphic Book 1963
Calligraphic Book is a prime example of what Li Yuan-chia referred to as ‘Cosmic Points’. These points symbolise the beginning and end of all things. They often appear as simple calligraphic marks, dots of colour, or punctures in the paper. The Cosmic Points explore ideas of infinite space, relativity, and the delicate balance between stability and fluidity. As Li suggested: ‘If you can really understand it, you will feel indeed the great life of the universe and the value of your existence.’
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artworks in ARTIST ROOMS: Agnes Martin
Judit Reigl, Mass Writing 1961
Reigl’s work is characterised by rhythm, action, and a sense of the body. Mass Writing comprises spontaneous, energetic gestures, where Reigl cut into layers of black and orange paint. The artist described her dynamic, performative method, saying: ‘my whole body is engaged in the work. It is with gestures that I write my urges and impulses in the space available’. This painting shows an intense encounter with materials, also evoking a sense of infinite space beyond the canvas. It also exemplifies automatism, popularised by the surrealists in the 1920s.
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artworks in ARTIST ROOMS: Agnes Martin
Hamed Abdalla, Lost or Escaped 1966
Abdalla trained in calligraphy and engaged with the principles of Islamic geometry. In this painting, the rounded, interlacing forms allude to bodily shapes or fragments. Together, they make up the painting’s Arabic title, Al Sharida, meaning ‘the mentally escaped’. This analogy of escape reflects the artist’s disillusionment with Pan-Arabism – a political ideology that called for all Arab people to be united in a single state – in his native Egypt in the late 1960s.
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artworks in ARTIST ROOMS: Agnes Martin
Hamed Abdalla, Meditation 1969
Meditation comprises an abstract representation of a human figure curled up at the base of the canvas. Abdalla used gestural brushstrokes to create what he called ‘word-forms’ and a blow-drying technique to produce a crackling effect, adding sculptural depth to the textured grey background. This painting combines Abdalla’s interpretation of Arabic calligraphy with the material experimentation of CoBrA artists, with whom he became involved in Copenhagen. The group, including Pierre Alechinsky and Christian Dotremont, displayed nearby, aimed to bridge the abstraction-figuration divide while celebrating spontaneous creation.
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artworks in ARTIST ROOMS: Agnes Martin
Art in this room
Sorry, no image available
Li Yuan-chia
Untitled
c.1954–61
Sorry, no image available
Li Yuan-chia
Untitled
c.1954–61
Anwar Jalal Shemza
Meem Two
1967
Saloua Raouda Choucair
Poem of Nine Verses
1966–8
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Untitled
1967
Etel Adnan
Key Signs
2017
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