PHILADELPHIA, PA.- This spring, the Philadelphia Museum of Art presents an intimately scaled installation featuring four paintings by Agnes Martin from the bequest of the late philanthropist, Daniel W. Dietrich II, a crucial supporter of the artist’s career. Three of these paintings date to the mid-1960s, and the fourth to 1985. They are being exhibited with additional works on paper and sculpture that Dietrich collected. This installation explores the ideas that inform Martin’s minimalist art, and reflect upon the enduring friendship that existed between a major artist and her patron.

Timothy Rub, The George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer, said: “Dan was a generous philanthropist and an admirer and avid collector of Martin’s work. He supported her first major mid-career retrospective in 1973 at the Institute of Contemporary Art here in Philadelphia. From that seminal moment onward, he continued to champion her work and added superb examples to his private collection. This installation provides a unique opportunity to understand the nature of Martin’s contribution to contemporary art and to understand how aspects of Dietrich’s transformative gift fit so well into our collection.”

Martin created each of the paintings that are on view—Leaf (1965), Play II (1966), Hill (1967) and Untitled #6 (1985)— using acrylic paint and graphite. These works, each six-feet square, have been complemented in the installation by another painting in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Rose (1965), a centennial gift of the Woodward Foundation in 1975, of the same medium and size.

The drawings included in this installation, such as The Sea/Ocean Water (1960), attest to Martin and Dietrich’s cordial relationship, as Martin dedicated the work to Dietrich. In addition to the works of art, archival materials of notes and correspondence between artist and patron have been included.

Born in Canada, Agnes Martin moved to the United States in 1931. She received her B.S. degree from Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1942, and her M.A. in 1952. Martin’s minimalist compositions include grids and stripes in pale colors on a square format. Her work has been included in exhibitions around the world, among them the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania (1973); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1991); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1993); Dia: Beacon, New York (2004); Tate Modern, London (2015); Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2015–16); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2016). Among the many awards that Martin received were the Skowhegan Medal for Painting (1987), the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale (1997), National Medal of Arts from the Office of the President (1998), and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art (2005).