Memoir of the relationship between the painter Agnes Martin and her assistant and friend Donald Woodman

For the first time in paperback, the PEN award-winning biography of visionary artist Agnes Martin, one of the most original and influential painters of the postwar period.

The only complete career retrospective of this visionary painter - a classic, now available again in a handsome new binding. Agnes Martin's career spanned over seven decades. Though a major influence on Minimalist painters, Martin saw her own work more closely related to Abstract Expressionism, her paintings being meditations on innocence, beauty, happiness and love.' This much-anticipated reissue of Arne Glimcher's highly-acclaimed book presents 130 of Martin's paintings and drawings alongside her previously unpublished writings and lecture notes. Glimcher's illuminating introduction, his personal memories of visits to Martin at her studio, and their correspondence throughout her career, reveal many insights into the artist's life and work.

"This is an intimate and revealing biography of Agnes Martin, renowned American painter, considered one of the great women artists of the 20th and 21st Century. A resident of both New Mexico and New York City, Martin has always remained an enigma due to her fiercely guarded private life. Henry Martin, award-winning writer, and art scholar, having access to those who were close to Agnes Martin--friends, family, former lovers--has given (gives) us a full portrait of this universally revered artist. Readers will learn of her bouts with mental illness, her several significant lesbian relationships, and her lifelong yearning for recognition despite her reclusive lifestyle and need for privacy. Arriving in the wake of major international retrospective exhibitions of her work from London's Tate Modern, LACMA in Los Angeles, and the Guggenheim in New York City, this book provides a perspective of Agnes Martin that has not been seen in earlier, more academic works or fine-art monographs. Certain to be a mainstay for readers of the arts, and admirers of the creative spirit, this book also includes rare photographs from Martin's family and friends, many of which have never appeared in a book before"--

Issued in connection with an exhibition held June 3-Oct. 11, Tate Modern, London; Nov. 7, 2015-Mar. 6, 2016, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Deusseldorf; Apr. 24-Sept. 11, 2016, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; and Oct. 7-Jan. 11, 2017, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Ive shut the door on yesterday, It sorrows and mistakes; Ive locked within its gloomy walls Past failures and heartaches And now I throw the key away To seek another room And furnish it with hope and smiles, And every springtime bloom. No thought shall enter this abode That has a hint of pain, And every malice and distrust Shall never therein reign. Ive shut the door on yesterday And thrown the key away- Tomorrow holds no doubt for me, Since I have found today.

Published to accompany a 1992-93 exhibition held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, this book deals with the full scope of Agnes Martin's art. It includes essays that place her work in the context of American and European 20th-century art and culture.