Agnes Martin was one of the most influential artists of her generation who is associated with the minimalist movement. Untitled #3, painted in bands of low-saturated chalky color, evokes the arid climate and abundant sunshine of New Mexico where Martin spent most of her life. The painting’s bands of pastel color establish the horizontal axis of a grid, which represented to Martin “immaterial perfection” or beauty. Martin believed that the grid, when applied to the surface of a canvas, lessened its overbearing compression of space. Within the grid she reasserted the primacy of subject matter in an abstract form that conveyed happiness, solitude, perfection, and the transcendent potential of art.