SASKATOON.- Remai Modern has become the first museum in western Canada to acquire a painting by globally celebrated artist Agnes Martin. The late-career painting, titled Tranquility (2000), is composed of ivory and lavender-blue bands that showcase the artist’s lifelong exploration of the subtlety of colour and power of abstraction. Bringing Martin’s work into the Remai Modern Collection allows the museum to tell a very special story that starts in Saskatchewan and has impacted the course of art history.

Remai Modern is only the third Canadian museum after the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario to acquire a painting by Martin, who has been recognized as one of the most influential artists of her generation.

“Though she spent most of her life away from the Prairies, Agnes Martin’s works carry a special connection to this region. Her iconic gridded paintings call to mind the patchwork of rural landscapes seen from above, while celebrated pieces featuring soft horizontal bands conjure vast expanses where land and sky meet in this province.” said Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh, Remai Modern’s Co-Executive Director & CEO. “This painting is a stunning example of the qualities that make Martin’s work so special, from the uncanny way her painting style absorbs and reflects light to her signature pencil lines. The soft vibration of light from this painting invites a special kind of meditative looking. We are grateful to be able to share Martin’s brilliance with generations of visitors to Remai Modern through this acquisition.”

The full cost of the acquisition of this significant work was supported by the Frank and Ellen Remai Foundation, whose total gifts to the contemporary art museum total more than $100 million since 2012. These transformative gifts—led by patron Ellen Remai—have included support to acquire 134 works by a wide range of local, national and international artists at various stages of their careers. In 2012, she also purchased and donated the world’s most comprehensive collection of linocuts by Pablo Picasso, which totals 405 works, to the museum.

Tranquility will be part of an upcoming suite of exhibitions in 2027 that celebrate Remai Modern’s 10th anniversary.

Agnes Martin (b. 1912, Macklin, Saskatchewan, Canada; d. 2004, Taos, New Mexico) was one of the most influential painters of her generation and left an indelible mark on the history of modern and contemporary art. Growing up in western Canada, she moved between New Mexico and New York throughout her early career.

For a decade starting in 1957, Martin lived and worked in Coenties Slip, a neighbourhood in lower Manhattan she shared with emerging artists including Ellsworth Kelly, before returning to New Mexico in 1968.

Inspired by the transcendent qualities of paintings by Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt, Martin considered herself to be an Abstract Expressionist. Nonetheless, her oeuvre played a critical role in heralding the advent of Minimalism, influencing, among others, Eva Hesse’s sculptural practice and Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings. Characterized by austere lines and grids combined with muted grounds of color, Martin’s paintings elegantly negotiate the confines of structure and space, draftsmanship, and the metaphysical.

Martin’s work is held in collections around the world including MOMA, New York; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Tate, London; and Centre Pompidou, Paris.