Martha Diamond
MARTHA DIAMOND "TOWER/BONES" PAINTING, 1987
Martha Diamond's (1944-2023) paintings captured the architectural and psychological essence of New York City. In dialogue with generations of abstract artists, Diamond is revered as one of America's most perceptive painters of the last five decades.
Diamond's oeuvre was defined by architectural and urban fascination. Growing up in Queens, she was moved by the dynamism of visiting Manhattan as a child. These trips left her with a lasting impression of motion, imposing skylines, and evolving infrastructure.
During a period of over fifty years of living and working in Lower Manhattan, she witnessed periods of intense artistic, cultural, and architectural change. By developing a practice rooted in lived experiences, she immersed herself and her viewers into the unique metropolitan kaleidoscope that was New York.
Diamond’s paintings, characterized by energetic brushwork and a rich engagement with color and surface, evoke New York’s soaring geometry as both structure and sensation. By combining spirited experimentation with perceptive observation, Diamond captures the emotion, character, and essence of the constructed spaces around her.
This painting is both intriguing and haunting, a true paradigm from her oeuvre. Rendered in shades of taupe, chocolate, chestnut and elephant grey with accents of tangerine, the painting depicts a soaring, evocative, hallucinatory construction. Evocative of a ribcage, the tower soars through a shroud of clouds. In "Tower/Bones," Diamond offers her viewers a dizzying architectural limb emerging from mist, clouds, smog...or memory.
Diamond's work is held in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Brooklyn Museum, NY; the Guggenheim, NY; MFA, Boston; The Whitney, NY; among others. She was the subject of a major survey exhibition Deep Time, organized by the Colby College Museum of Art in Maine (2024), and The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut (2025).
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"Tower/Bones"
USA, 1987
Oil on canvas
36"H 24"W (canvas)
43.5"H 31.5"W (framed)
Newly framed
Very good condition
Robert Miller Gallery label verso (inventory number DIAM-0106)
Robert Millery Gallery stamped on canvas stretcher verso
Exhibition History: The Butler Institute of American Art (Youngstown, OH) in the 53rd Annual National Midyear Exhibition (June 25-August 20, 1989) Label verso.
Provenance: Single owner. Acquired from the Robert Miller Gallery in January 1990. Copy of original bill of sale available.
Note: This painting will be included in the upcoming Catalogue Raisonné of all known paintings, prints, and drawings by Martha Diamond, organized by the Martha Diamond Trust.
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