The Buttercup Fairy - A Young Girl

This painting exemplifies the enduring nature of artist Agnes Martin’s sublime sense of geometry, color combination, and artistic rigor.

In the late 1950s, Martin had begun using geometric forms and obsessively drawing grids, a format she associated with nature. “When I first made a grid,” she wrote, “I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees and then this grid came into my mind and I thought it represented innocence, and I still do... I thought, this is my vision.” The “innocence” she envisioned appears in some sense to be reflected here, through both the painting’s delicate coloration and its title.