Pat Steir facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Pat Steir
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Steir in 2014
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| Born | 1938 |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Pratt Institute Boston University College of Fine Arts |
| Known for | Painting, printmaking |
| Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship (1982); Pratt Institute honorary doctorate (1991); Boston University Distinguished Alumni Award (2001); Pratt Institute Alumni Achievement Award (2008) |
Pat Steir (born 1938) is an American painter and printmaker. She is famous for her abstract "Waterfall" paintings. These artworks use dripped, splashed, and poured paint. She started making them in the 1980s. She also creates large wall drawings for specific places.
Steir's art has been shown in many places around the world. These include the Tate Gallery in London and the Brooklyn Museum in New York. She has won several awards for her work. Her art is also part of major museum collections in the United States and other countries. These include the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. She helped start Printed Matter, a bookshop, and Heresies, a feminist art journal. Steir has also taught art at different universities. She lives and works mostly in New York City.
Contents
Early Life and Art School
Pat Steir was born Iris Patricia Sukoneck in 1938 in Newark, New Jersey. She went to the Pratt Institute in New York from 1956 to 1958. There, her teachers Richard Lindner and Phillip Guston influenced her art. She also studied at Boston University College of Fine Arts from 1958 to 1960. Steir returned to Pratt and earned her art degree (BFA) in 1962.
Pat Steir's Art Career
Starting Out as an Artist
In 1962, right after finishing art school, Pat Steir's work was shown in a group exhibition. This show was at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1964, her drawings were featured at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She had her first solo art show at the Terry Dintenfass Gallery in New York in 1964.
During these early years, she worked as an illustrator and book designer. She also became an art director at Harper & Row publishing company. Around 1970, she became friends with Sol LeWitt and Lawrence Weiner, who were conceptual artists. She also began visiting artist Agnes Martin in New Mexico.
In the 1970s, Steir became well-known for paintings of roses or other images that were "X-ed out." She explained that she wanted to "destroy images as symbols." She aimed to make the image a "symbol for a symbol" by crossing it out. This meant "no imagery, but at the same time endless imagery." An example of this style is her 1974 painting Nothing, which is now at the Honolulu Museum of Art.
Famous "Waterfall" Paintings
Pat Steir's first museum exhibition was in 1973 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. This marked the start of her busy career with many painting shows. She has also created installation art, like her work at Documenta IX in Germany in 1992. She is also an important printmaker. Crown Point Press started publishing her prints in 1977.
In the late 1980s, Steir was inspired by artists John Cage and Agnes Martin. She began making her famous "Waterfall" paintings. These works use dripped, splashed, and poured paint. She let chance play a big role in how the paint flowed. Steir connected this style to ancient Chinese Yipin "ink-splashing" painters. She studied how ink splash relates to nature and humanity. She was also inspired by Tibetan philosophy. Wind and Water is an example of her work from this time.
From 1989 to 1992, Steir started using only one color in her paintings. In 1995, a book called Pat Steir was published about her life and art. In 1999, the magazine Art in America featured her work. The article said her "waterfall paintings" show her interest in Asian art and Daoism. Daoism is an ancient Chinese philosophy. Her paintings show the flow of water, or in her case, paint, down a surface.
In 2010, Steir created an installation called The Nearly Endless Line. It was a white line that snaked around blue-black walls, lit with blue light. One writer said that walking through the space made observers feel "inside Steir’s painting." Pat Steir once said she wanted to be a "great artist" who could "reach the soul of other people."
Awards and Recognition
Pat Steir has received many awards for her art. She got grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1973 and 1976. In 1982, she was given a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts. Both of her old art schools have honored her. Pratt Institute gave her an Honorary Doctorate in 1991 and an Alumni Achievement Award in 2008. Boston University gave her a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2001. In 2016, Steir became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Where to See Her Art
Exhibitions
Over more than fifty years, Pat Steir has shown her art in many galleries and museums. These are all over the U.S. and in other countries. Some galleries where she has had solo shows include Terry Dintenfass Gallery and Robert Miller Gallery.
Her art has also been shown in major museums. These include the Corcoran Gallery of Art (1973) and the Brooklyn Museum (1984). Other museums include the Museum of Fine Arts Bern (1987) and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum (2010).
- Silent Secret Waterfalls: The Barnes Series, Barnes Foundation, 2019.
- Pat Steir: Color Wheel, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2019.
Museum Collections
You can find Pat Steir’s art in many important public collections worldwide. These include:
- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)
- Museum of Modern Art (New York City)
- Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City)
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York City)
- National Gallery of Art (Washington, D. C.)
- Tate Gallery (London)
- Phoenix Art Museum (Phoenix, Arizona)
- Honolulu Museum of Art
- Walker Art Center
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
- Baltimore Museum of Art
- Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon (France)
- The Long Museum (Shanghai)
- Kunstmuseum Bern (Switzerland)
- Malmo Museum (Sweden)
