NEW YORK, NY.- Thaddaeus Ropac announced representation of Martha Diamond (1944–2023). Over more than sixty years, Diamond developed a distinctive body of work that engages with the language and ideas of abstraction, reflecting her grounding in the experimental energy of the avant-garde movements that surrounded her in her native New York in the second half of the 20th century. Reimagining the tradition of landscape painting for a modern metropolis, Diamond’s works capture both the velocity and the formal beauty of the urban world. Thaddaeus Ropac gallery will work with the Martha Diamond Trust alongside David Kordansky gallery.

Technically speaking, Martha’s paintings are up there with the best painters of the time. The paint strokes in her works achieve a sense of tone that can go up against anybody. And on top of that, the imagery is incredibly inventive. — Alex Katz

The first major exhibition dedicated to Diamond’s work in Europe will open in September 2026 at the Sara Hildén Art Museum in Tampere, Finland. Our first presentation of her work at the gallery will take place at Thaddaeus Ropac Paris in 2027.

Martha Diamond’s work embodies the experimental spirit of the New York avant-garde in which she was immersed. Her meticulous attention to material, gesture and the possibilities of the brushstroke converge as a force of universal and historical resonance, while still so of the moment and so fresh. At the heart of her practice are questions about the act of artmaking itself. — Thaddaeus Ropac

Working across large-scale canvases, small studies in oil on board and prints, Diamond found her voice distilling the familiar geometry of urban architecture into audacious yet carefully composed brushstrokes. Although often sourced in the vertiginous heights and unyielding contours of downtown New York City, the familiarity and universality of the forms she painted transcend specific places, encouraging the viewer to look beyond representation and engage with the works’ painterly qualities – structure, light, colour.

Numerous significant institutions staged exhibitions of her work during her lifetime, and her paintings were shown in the Whitney Museum of Art's influential 1984 MetaManhattan show as well as in its 1989 Biennial. Most recently, in 2024–25, a critically acclaimed solo exhibition was held at Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Connecticut. Frequently cited by her artist peers including Alex Katz and David Salle, in 2023 her work featured in a group exhibition curated by David Salle at the Hill Art Foundation, New York.

Light and rhythm are such a basic part of order — almost everything can be defined that way, joy as well as monumentality. They can be thrilling even before they become attributes. That’s where my spirituality lies. — Martha Diamond

Beginning in the late 1960s, Diamond surrounded herself with the poets and artists of the New York School, in which she was an active participant. After moving to a loft on the Bowery in 1969, the city views from her window became a lasting source of inspiration. Over time, Diamond built a repertoire of recurring motifs, primarily made up of what she described as ‘architectural and archetypal forms’, which in the 1980s developed into the explicitly urban figurations on canvas that have become her most recognisable works. From the late 1980s, Diamond began transferring the painterly exhilaration of her architectural works onto abstract paintings. Built from isolated and repeated gestures and forms, these works, which accompanied her cityscapes until the end of her career, nevertheless evoke the geometry of high-rise structures as readily as the rudimentary shapes of ancient architecture.

What Frank Auerbach did for Camden Town, and Monet did for Paris, and De Chirico did for piazzas all over Italy, Diamond did for Manhattan. None of these artists were bothered with assiduous documentation of the built environment so much as with conveying how it felt to them. — Jonathan Griffin, New York Times

Diamond’s work is housed in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of the City of New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; and National Gallery, Berlin, among others.