In two days I will finally get to see Agnes Martin at Tate Modern in London. It is a show I have been looking forward to see all summer. You will, no doubt, get a report – here is just a little teaser …

Agnes Martin: Untitled (Study for “The Egg”) 1960. Ink on paper © Estate of Agnes Martin

From the outset, critical responses to Martin’s work were positive, but if you haven’t actually seen a Martin canvas, you will always be hard pressed to understand what it can do. The qualities of her work, her repetitive handwork with lines and color-washes, can’t be satisfactory reproduced in books or on posters. Martin’s work is rarely on show in Europe, of the more than a hundred works by Martin in the Tate exhibition, only seven are from public European galleries. The present retrospective, at Tate Modern until 11 October, is the biggest ever to be mounted (after London it will travel to Düsseldorf, Los Angeles and New York).

Agnes Martin: Untitled 1965. Watercolour, ink and gouache on paper © Estate of Agnes Martin

When I think of art, I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye, it is in my mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection.

Agnes Martin

A short presentation of the Tate exhibition can be found here