Joan Snyder has spent the last six decades reinventing American abstraction, reclaiming a historically male-dominated mode of painting.
Read MoreJoan Snyder was born in 1940 in Highland Park, New Jersey. She received her undergraduate degree from the all-women Douglass College in 1962, and graduated with an MFA from Rutgers University in 1966.
She moved from New Jersey to New York City the following year.
Snyder gained prominence early in her career in the 1970s as an active feminist artist in the New York scene. Her continued importance as a feminist abstract painter was cemented in a major retrospective at The Jewish Museum, New York, in 2005.
Stroke Paintings (1970s)
Snyder found an artistic language to convey femininity through abstraction, using the grid as a foundation for her paintings. This experimentation resulted in her 'Stroke' series in which rhythmic, vivid brushstrokes move across the canvas, as seen in Smashed Strokes Hope (1971) and Birth (1972).
These pivotal paintings earned Snyder a place in the first Whitney Biennial in 1973, and again in 1981, and well as the 1975 Corcoran Biennial.
Symbolism and Text
Later works saw Snyder incorporate text and symbols into her compositions, especially those of the female body. In the 1995 print, Our Foremothers, women's names featured in both English and Hebrew among breast-like purple and pink markings.
Collage
Beyond oil and acrylic painting, Snyder also works with collage. Her multicoloured canvases often incorporate materials such as burlap, gauze, thread, and glitter, as well as more natural elements such as mud, herbs, seeds, and dried flowers.
Snyder's artwork tends to be autobiographical, although her later paintings have been influenced by more global women's issues. Snyder is also heavily inspired by music, looking to capture a multitude of emotions and narratives through her rhythmic brushstrokes, just as a musical composition might.
Snyder's paintings are represented in museum collections across the United States, including Art Institute of Chicago; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Her work is also found in the collection of Tate Modern, London.
Joan Snyder is the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Art (2016), MacArthur Fellowship (2007), Guggenheim Fellowship (1983), and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1974).
Joan Snyder has exhibited widely in the United States, Europe, and the U.K. Selected solo exhibitions include Thaddaeus Ropac, London (2024); CANADA, New York (2024); Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York (2022); and Galerie Haas, Zurich (2021).
Group exhibitions include Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2023–2025); Tate Modern, London (2023–2024); Brooklyn Museum, New York (2020); and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2018–2020).
Joan Snyder's paintings appear regularly at auctions. Her secondary market hit new highs in November 2023, when The Stripper (1973) and Celebration (1979) both hammered for more than triple their high estimates at Christie's New York.
Joan Snyder's website can be found here and her Instagram here.
Articles on Joan Snyder have been published in various publications, including Art in America, Hyperallergic, and Artnet.
Rachel Kubrick | Ocula | 2024