Martha Diamond’s largest solo exhibition at the Sara Hildén Art Museum
For over six decades, Martha Diamond (1944–2023) explored the relationship between abstraction and the urban landscape in her paintings. The exhibition presents the artist’s oil paintings from the mid-1970s to 2008. Around 70 paintings from the Martha Diamond Trust Collection will be on display.
“We are particularly proud to have the opportunity to present Martha Diamond’s work in Europe for the first time — and in what is also the most extensive solo exhibition of the artist’s work to date”, says Chief Curator Sarianne Soikkonen.
From an early age, Diamond was captivated by architecture, distance and human-made spaces. Early in her career, she devoted herself to depicting structures and archetypal forms using thick impasto and vigorous brushstrokes.
Around 1980, the urban landscape became a central theme in Diamond’s work. Her paintings drew on the forms of New York skyscrapers, the rhythm of the city, and variations in light and scale.
From the late 1980s onwards, Diamond began painting purely abstract works alongside her architectural studies. These gradually evolved from colour-saturated compositions towards increasingly reductive, monochrome works.
Diamond’s primary interest, however, was not the subject matter but the process of painting itself — the experimentation and exploration involved. “If I express anything, it’s how the brush works”, the artist once remarked.
Recognising the significance of her own art, Martha Diamond took steps to preserve her legacy, establishing a trust in her name in 2020 to safeguard her artistic estate.
“This exhibition collaboration demonstrates the vital role that foundations and trusts play in preserving cultural heritage and passing it on to future generations,” says Museum Director Anna Hjorth-Röntynen.
The exhibition at the Sara Hildén Art Museum has been organised in collaboration with the Martha Diamond Trust and Thaddaeus Ropac gallery (Salzburg, Paris, London, Milan, Seoul). It has been curated by Sarianne Soikkonen, Chief Curator at the Sara Hildén Art Museum, and Olivia Funk, Director of the Martha Diamond Trust.
An exhibition catalogue will be published in conjunction with the exhibition, featuring essays by Kiko Aebi and Frank Rose, a poem by Anne Waldman, and an artist biography by Ailsa McDougall.
Martha Diamond, 19 September 2026–17 January 2027 at the Sara Hildén Art Museum.
