In The Spotlight: Canadian-Born Artist Agnes Martin

Executive editor Kimberley Brown shares why Canadian-born artist Agnes Martin should be on your radar. 
Inspiration can come from anywhere, but when designers turn to artists, things tend to get gorgeous fast. Take Yves Saint Laurent’s Mondrain-inspired dresses in 1965, Salvador Dali and Elsa Schiaparelli’s lobster dress in 1937 and Takashi Murakami’s smiling flowers for Louis Vuitton in 2003. For interiors, there’s Chrisopher Farr’s amazing Edition rugs that replicate works by Josef Albers, David Weeks and Gary Hume, plus Droog’s striped wallpaper in colors borrowed from Johannes Vermeer, to name only two.

This month, the latest design/art partnership has modern minimalists swooning as COS releases a fashion collection inspired by the simple grid and stripe paintings of Canadian-born artist Agnes Martin.

But this isn’t just another fashion collection. Just as the 12-piece line for men and women hit COS stores around the world, a retrospective of Agnes’s work sponsored by COS opened at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Running from October 7, 2016 to January 11, 2017, the exhibit — mounted in the museum’s famous rotunda — includes paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures that reveal the artist’s commitment to spare style.

Speaking of the artwork, architects Annick Houle and Stephen O’Connor of O’Connor and Houle Architecture are fortunate enough to hang Agnes’s work on their walls instead of in their closets. The dining room in their modernist Melbourne, Australia, home (pictured above) also serves as a gallery of sorts for a series by Martin.