Agnes Martin Dies

Agnes Martin, one of the world's foremost abstract artists, whose spare paintings reflected the simple life she sought, died at 92.
She was one of America's most distinguished artists, with an "amazing ability to reduce to essence all that we feel about space and light," said the Director of the Smithsonian's American Art Museum. "She stands for an awful lot in the story of contemporary art over the past 50 years."
Martin's abstracts are in collections at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Tate Gallery in London.
"She is known for her minimal - not minimalistic - style of painting. Minimalist has to do with artists who leave little trace of their own personality in the work. But Agnes came out of abstract expressionism."
The minimal style often is interpreted as cold and mechanical, but Martin's paintings were just the opposite -- beautiful, sensuous, serene and contemplative, said John Elderfield, chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, which has 14 of Martin's paintings. There was no funeral.
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