Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. It gave me the materials I needed and a certain amount of security and enabled me to make a very good try for my New York show. This did not succeed but Miss Betty Parsons whose gallery I will eventually show in assured me that in one more year she thought I could make it, which is not discouraging.. .I painted all together one hundred canvasses of which I had a good opinion and sold seven [in a year]." - Meaning and context.">
In a letter to Helene Wurlitzer, late 1956; as quoted by Christina Bryan Rosenberger, in Drawing the Line: The Early Work of Agnes Martin, Univ of California Press, July 2016, p. 88
“

I am grateful for the [financial] assistance I received last year [1955] through the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. It gave me the materials I needed and a certain amount of security and enabled me to make a very good try for my New York show. This did not succeed but Miss Betty Parsons whose gallery I will eventually show in assured me that in one more year she thought I could make it, which is not discouraging.. .I painted all together one hundred canvasses of which I had a good opinion and sold seven [in a year].

— Agnes Martin

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "I am grateful for the [financial] assistance I received last year [1955] through the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. It gave me the materials I needed and a certain amount of security and enabled me to make a very good try for my New York show. This did not succeed but Miss Betty Parsons whose gallery I will eventually show in assured me that in one more year she thought I could make it, which is not discouraging.. .I painted all together one hundred canvasses of which I had a good opinion and sold seven [in a year]." in the context of "In a letter to Helene Wurlitzer, late 1956; as quoted by Christina Bryan Rosenberger, in Drawing the Line: The Early Work of Agnes Martin, Univ of California Press, July 2016, p. 88" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Agnes Martin" (Quotes of Agnes Martin: sorted chronologically, after date of the quotes of Agnes Martin, 1950's) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Agnes Martin

About Agnes Martin

Agnes Bernice Martin (22 March 1912 – 16 December 2004), born in Canada, was an American abstract painter. Although she is often considered or referred to as a minimalist artist like Robert Ryman, Agnes Martin considered herself an abstract expressionist artist.