A breathtaking manifestation of Agnes Martin’s virtuosic practice, Innocent Love converges mesmerizing washes of yellow and eggshell white in hypnotic bands across an expansive surface- immersing the viewer in the sheer tranquility of an entrancing atmosphere. Painted three years before Martin’s passing, sheer, convulsing veneers of illusory color render Innocent Love truly at the height of the artist’s mature practice. Ultimately returning to her desert sanctuary of New Mexico, Martin spent her last years committed to her life-long inquiry of the limits of Abstraction- upholding the practice of abstinence from figurative notion that delineated the sensuousness of her oeuvre. Speaking on viewing Martin’s work, critic Kasha Linville poised, “Once you are caught in one of her paintings, it is an almost painful effort to pull back from the private experience she triggers to examine the way the picture is made. The desire to simply let yourself flow through it, or let it flow through you, is much stronger. Even at its evocative best, her work holds for its own beauty, for the extraordinary skill and delicacy of her line and surface.``( Kasha Linville, “Agnes Martin: An Appreciation”, Artforum, Summer 1971, Vol. 9, No. 10). This masterful balance between visual lyricism and geometric austerity distinguishes Martin as a leading figure of the post-war art canon.

The present works comes from the remarkable collects ion of Bill Katz who has charted his legacy as a designer, taste-making architect and an aesthetic adviser to many of the world’s most creative luminaries including artists Anselm Kiefer, Agnes Martin, Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns. After graduating from Johns Hopkins, Katz moved to New York City, where he met Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin, Marisol and Andy Warhol. He became lifelong friends with Agnes Martin and Robert Indiana both of whom gifted him the works on offer the year they were created. In 1974, he helped Agnes Martin build her log cabin studio in New Mexico and in 1976 helped film the artist’s only completed film Gabriel. She gifted him the 2001 painting Innocent Love as a symbol of their deep and lifelong friendship.
The virtuosity of Innocent Love lies not in the symMetricas l regularity of Martin's neat lines, but in the singular sophistication with which she orchestrates gesture, material, and technique in painting a plane of limitless emotive potency. The reticent bands of washed citrus, evocative of the broad arid vistas of New Mexico, virtually disappear into the hushed tonality of the expanse. Coats of gesso imbue the paint with a staggering sense of spatial depth, extending the dimensionality of the plane through the manipulation of light. Dizzyingly swept into this surreal panorama, viewers are enveloped by a supernal field of vision- a simultaneously intimate and universal experience. Surrounded by this serene field, Martin’s human touch externalizes itself from the rigidness of the surface - imbuing Innocent Love an ineffable sense of being. Slight impressions, such as a discontinuity in the gradient of her wash, or a pause in a graphite line, are inflections of a vernacular predicated upon verdant serenity.

A stark contrast to the prerogative of Minimalism, Martin’s wavering undulations reflect the variations of pressure and density inherent to the human touch; against the highly disciplined framework of Innocent Love, the tremulous fragility of her hand suggests the sublime union of intent and entropy found only in nature.

Martin felt deeply that there was a greater notion of beauty lying beyond corporeal facilities, and to a greater extent, adjacent to celebrated aesthetics of materiality. Turning towards the natural world, Martin sought to manifest in her work an affinity with the innate resplendence of physical reality. Reflecting upon her philosophy and its connection to her artistry, Martin noted, “The miracle of existence is that we are able to recognize perfection in beauty. Beauty is unattached; when a beautiful rose dies beauty does not die because it is not really in the rose. Beauty is an awareness in the mind.” (Exh. Cat., New York, Whitney Museum of American Art (and traveling), Agnes Martin, 1992, p. 93-94).