Canadian-born Agnes Martin made this work soon after moving to New York, where she kept a studio on Coenties Slip, a street in Lower Manhattan where other artists, including Ellsworth Kelly, Jack Youngerman, and Robert Indiana, also lived and worked. This setting, so close to the East River that she “could see the expressions on the faces of the sailors,” is invoked in the pale blue-gray palette and the chalky, almost watery paint of the abstract geometric composition of Harbor Number 1. Soon after this work was made, Martin would develop her signature style—grids hand-drawn in pencil on large square canvases—which would remain her primary compositional approach for the rest of her career.
Gallery label from Studio Visit: Selected Gifts from Agnes Gund, 2018
