The trust of American painter Martha Diamond will be represented by Thaddaeus Ropac

By Katherine McGrath

Thaddaeus Ropac has announced the representation of the estate of American painter Martha Diamond, who passed away in 2023 at the age of 79. Ropac will work with the Martha Diamond Trust as well as David Kordansky Gallery.

The news comes ahead of the first major European exhibition, which will open at the Sara Hildén Museum in Tampere, Finland, this September. Ropac’s first presentation of Diamond’s work will take place at their Paris outpost in 2027.

“Martha Diamond’s work embodies the experimental spirit of the New York avant-garde in which she was immersed,” said gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac in a press statement. “Her meticulous attention to material, gesture, and the possibilities of the brushstroke converge as a force of universal and historical resonance, while still so of the moment and so fresh. At the heart of her practice are questions about the act of artmaking itself.”

Working primarily across painting, Diamond is best known for her sweeping abstractions of the New York City skyline. She was seduced by the skyscrapers, and used thick, frenetic brushstrokes to render the contours of the city’s architecture in vibrant colors and varying textures. A prominent member of the New York School and the downtown poetry scene alongside John Giorno and Peter Schjeldahl, she found inspiration in artists such as Joan Mitchell, Jackson Pollock, and Franz Kline.