Joan Snyder
Joan Snyder’s (b. 1940, Highland Park, NJ) esteemed career spans more than fifty years, through which she has continuously invented and expanded upon her singular technical and material vocabulary within painting. This approach has resulted in a unique, recognizable voice that is visually expressed, and that evokes a personal emotive impact. Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the artist’s Stroke paintings – widely regarded as an essential counterpoint to the male-dominated Minimalist genre of the time – Snyder has rooted her practice in a deeply feminist area. Snyder unabashedly mines personal and collective experiences, and regularly employs varied techniques and nonconventional materials, which has culminated in a career most often recognized for its fiercely individual, intimate approach.
In her essential essay on Snyder’s early work titled “The Anatomy of a Stroke,” the late scholar Marcia Tucker writes: “Snyder’s dictum of ‘more, not less,’ the welter of visual contradiction in her work, her continued concern with making impossibilities exist in the same frame of reference, all amount to a pictorial reality which shares, in its richness, the reality of our own experience, and cannot be fully comprehended outside that context.”
Snyder has exhibited widely with early works included in the 1973 and 1981 Whitney Biennials and the 1975 Corcoran Biennial. In 2006, her work was the subject of a major solo and traveling exhibition Joan Snyder: A Painting Survey, 1969-2005 originating at The Jewish Museum, New York. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, most notably included in WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, MOCA, Los Angeles (2006-2008); Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age, curated by Achim Hochdörfer, Brandhorst Museum, Munich, and mumok, Vienna (2016); Art After Stonewall: 1969-1989, Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, New York (2019-2020); Out of Place: A Feminist Look at the Collection, Brooklyn Museum (2020); and Epic Abstraction: Pollock to Herrera, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2018-2020).
Snyder is the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Art (2016), a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2007), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1983), and a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship (1974). Her paintings reside in the following permanent collections: Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Dallas Museum of Art, TX; The Jewish Museum, NY; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; The Museum of Modern Art, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; and Tate Modern, London, UK; among others.
Select Works
Select Exhibitions
The Summer Becomes A Room, Canada, New York, NY
September 2 - October 10, 2020
Select Press
2023
Avgikos, Jan. “Painting in New York 1971-83.” Artforum, January, 2023.
2022
Kuspit, Donald. “Joan Snyder.” Artforum, print. October 2022.
Soboleva, Ksenia. “Painting in New York 1971-83.” The Brooklyn Rail, October, 2022.
Kleetblatt, Norman. “Joan Snyder: To Become a Painting.” The Brooklyn Rail, Jul-Aug., 2022.
“Pioneering Woman Artists at Frieze New York 2022.” Frieze, April, 2022.
2020
Andrew, Jason. “Joan Snyder: Painting from the inside out.” Two Coats of Paint, September 18, 2020.
Syej, Nadja. “Out of place: the exhibition shining a light on under-seen female artists.” The Guardian, January 21, 2020.
2019
Budick, Ariella. “Art After Stonewall - Exhilarating New York Exhibition Charts the Fight for Gay Rights.” Financial Times, May 8, 2019.
Sherwin, Skye. “Joan Snyder’s Proserpina: a Cycle of Death and Renewal” The Guardian, April 5th, 2019.
Wilkin, Karen. “‘Epic Abstraction’ Review: High Expectations and Trepidations.” The Wall Street Journal, January 12, 2019.
2018
Smith, Roberta, “At the Met Museum, an Abstract Show That Falls Short of Epic.” The New York Times, December 20, 2018.
Cohen, David. “Featured Item from THE LIST: Joan Snyder at Anders Wahlstedt.” Artcritical, December 18th, 2018.
Snyder-Fink, Molly. “My Mother’s Altar: Joan Snyder Paints to Face Herself.” Woman’s Art Journal, Fall/Winter 2018.
”Joan Snyder: The Female Presence.” Two Coats of Paint. May 16, 2018.
Black, Ezrha Jean. “Artillery Best in Show 2017.” Artillery, January 2nd, 2018.
2016
Griffin, Jonathan. “Joan Snyder, Womansong.” ArtReview, Summer Issue, 2016, pg. 141.
Wagley, Catherine. “5 Art Shows to See in L.A. This Week.” LA Weekly, June 1, 2016.
Pagel, David. “Review: Discoveries at Every Turn in Joan Snyder Paintings at Parrasch Heijnen.” Los Angeles Times, May 11, 2016.
“Q&A: Joan Snyder.” Flaunt. May 2016.
“Must See Los Angeles.” Artforum, May 11, 2016.
Scher, Robin. “The American Academy of Arts and Letters Announce Winners of Awards in Art.” Artforum, 23 March 2016.
2014
Manes, Cara. “Speaking with Joan Snyder About Sweet Cathy’s Song.” MoMA Inside Out, May 8, 2014.
2011
Esplund, Lance. “Lady of the Wild Things.” The Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2011.
Schwendener, Martha. “The Consciousness of a Feminist Expressionist.” The New York Times, May 14, 2011.
Cotter, Holland. "The Jewel Thief" at the Tang Museum, The New York Times, January 2011.
McQuaid, Cate. “Life reflected in rage, grief, gratitude.” The Boston Globe, 25 October 2011.
2010
Frederick, Jeff. “Joan Snyder at Betty Cunningham.” Art in America, November 10, 2010, pp. 176- 177.
Smith, Roberta. “A Year in the Painting Life.” The New York Times, Art in Review, October 1, 2010, p. C28.
Rosenberg, Karen. “A Raucous Reflection on Identity: Jewish and Feminine” The New York Times, September 10, 2010, p. C26.
1989
Muchnic, Suzanne. “ART REVIEW: Two Views of the ‘Revival’ of the Abstract.” Los Angeles Times, 24 January 1989.
1986
Henry, Gerrit. “Joan Snyder: True Grit.” Art in America 74, no. 2, February 1986, pp. 96-101.
1979
Joan Snyder, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA. Catalogue
1971
Tucker, Marcia. “Anatomy of a Stroke: Recent Paintings by Joan Snyder.” Artforum, May 1971.