PORTO.- Lines, Grids, Stains, Words brings together 57 drawings and one series of prints from the Museum’s collection, many of them were on view at MoMA for the first time, that share the seemingly simple and impersonal characteristics of Minimal art. Critical of the bold expressive gestures of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalist artists aimed to remove the hand of the maker from the work of art, often utilizing industrial fabrication techniques and materials and employing isolated lines, monochrome, and text organized in rows, grids, and repetitive sequences. However, on paper, the hand of the artist is often revealed through small inconsistencies and seeming mistakes that soften the anonymity of the lines and girds. Beginning with the 1960s and continuing into the present, the exhibition traces the evolution of these formal devices, as well as artistic techniques including ripping, folding, and scribbling.

Works on view in the exhibition include Agnes Martin’s (American, born Canada, 1912–2004) imprecise ruler drawing Wood (1964) and Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s (American, born Cuba, 1957–1996) “Untitled” (t-cell count) (1990), a grid drawing that reads as a diagram of the HIVpositive artist’s blood-cell count. Among the works on view for the first time are drawings by such artists as Polly Apfelbaum, Dan Flavin, Mona Hatoum, Jonathan Horowitz, Sol LeWitt, and Adrian Piper.