“When I cover the square surface with rectangles, it lightens the weight of the square. Destroys its power.”

— Agnes Martin

as quoted by Lucy R. Lippard, in 'Hommage to the Square', Art in America, July-August 1967, p. 55
This quote is one of the most frequently quoted statements of Agnes Martin. A later variation by her: 'The rectangle is pleasant, whereas the square is not'; Agnes Martin is than 89 - quoted in A House Divided: American Art Since 1955, Anne M. G. Wagner Univ. of California Press 2012, p. 263
1960's

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Agnes Martin 48

American artist 1912–2004

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

1980 - 2000, Perfection Is in the Mind', 1995

“From a careful determination of the amount of solar heat that which would fall per minute on an area of one square centimetre placed perpendicular to the radiation as it falls on Earth's surface and from a knowledge of the Earth's distance, we deduce that each square centimetre of the solar surface radiates on the average of about the rate of a nine horse-power engine.”

Gerald James Whitrow (1912–2000) British mathematician

"Why the Sun Shines" (18 July 1957)

“I comma square bracket recruit's name square bracket comma…”

Terry Pratchett book Men at Arms

Men at Arms

“Already in 1915, Sophie Taeuber [his wife] divides the surface of her aquarelle into squares and rectangles which she then juxtaposes horizontally and perpendicularly [as Mondrian, Itten and Paul Klee did in the same period]. She constructs them as if they were masonry work. The colors are luminous, ranging from the raw yellow to deep red or blue.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Source: 1960s, Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966), p. 288, Arp refers in this quote to the structure in the early watercolor paintings by his wife Sophie Taeuber.