Joan Snyder

Joan Snyder, (born April 16, 1940), is an American painter from New York. She is a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow.

Snyder first gained public attention in the early 1970s with her gestural and elegant “stroke paintings,” which used the grid to deconstruct and retell the story of abstract painting. By the late seventies, Snyder had abandoned the formality of the grid. She began more explicitly incorporating symbols and text, as the paintings took on a more complex materiality. These early works were included in the 1973 and 1981 Whitney Biennials and the 1975 Corcoran Biennial.

"The functions of Ms. Snyder's art, first and foremost, are to further the tradition of painting and to explore the most serious aspects of the human condition; to connect us not only to one another and to nature but to ancient rites and myths. She reminds us that no matter how modern and civilized we are, art can still be raw, primitive and talismanic. Without apologies or decorum, Ms. Snyder's work awakens all of the things still wild within us." – Lance Esplund, WSJ^[1]

Often referred to as an autobiographical or confessional artist, Snyder’s paintings are narratives of both personal and communal experiences.^[2] Through a fiercely individual approach and persistent experimentation with technique and materials,^[3] Snyder has extended the expressive potential of abstract painting, inspiring generations of emerging artists.

Honors and fellowships

Snyder is the recipient of a 1974 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a 1983 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, a 2007 MacArthur Fellowship,^[4] and a 2016 Arts & Letters Award in Art^[5] from the American Academy of Arts & Letters.

Personal life

Joan Snyder was born on April 16, 1940 in Highland Park, New Jersey. She received her AB from Douglass College in 1962 and her MFA from Rutgers University-New Brunswick in 1966.

In 1969 Snyder married photographer Larry Fink. She gave birth to their daughter, Molly, in 1979. Her grandson Elijah was born in 2012. In 2011 Snyder married her partner of 28 year, Margaret Cammer, a retired New York State Acting Supreme Court Judge and the former NY Deputy Administrative Judge of The New York City Civil Court.

Snyder currently lives and works in Brooklyn and Woodstock, NY. She is represented by Franklin Parrasch Gallery in New York, NY, Parrasch Heijnen Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, and Elena Zang Gallery in Woodstock, NY.

Education

After graduating from Douglass College in 1962, Snyder received her MFA from Rutgers University-New Brunswick in 1966.

Works

While living on a New Jersey farm in 1962, Snyder worked in a studio on the Raritan River in New Brunswick, creating some of her earliest paintings of farm and landscape scenes, as well as expressionist portraits. In the mid to late 60’s she was working explicitly with the idea of female sensibility, using materials in her paintings such as lentil seeds, flocking, thread, glitter and gauze. These works eventually led to Snyder’s seminal stroke paintings in the late 60’s and early ‘70’s.

Stroke Paintings

In the early 1970’s Snyder began to explore paint as subject, reconstructing abstract painting through gestural strokes on canvas over a gridded background. These paintings, more commonly known as her ‘stroke’ paintings, were included in the 1973 and 1981 Whitney Biennials as well as the Corcoran Biennial in 1975.

Following the stroke paintings in the mid 70s, Snyder’s work once again revisited female sensibility and the work more vigorously explored materiality. By the late 70s she abandoned the formality of the grid and began to more explicitly incorporate symbols and text in her paintings.^[6]

The Feminist Movement

In 1971 Snyder founded the Mary H. Dana Women Artist Series, “the oldest continuous running exhibition space in the United States dedicated to making visible the work of emerging and established contemporary women artists.”^[7]

She became a contributing member of Heresies, a Feminist Publication On Art and Politics, alongside artists and critics including Ida Applebroog, Joyce Kozloff, Lucy Lippard, Nina Yankowitz, Joan Braderman, Sue Heinemann and Miriam Schapiro, among many others.

Exhibitions and Collections

In 2005, The Jewish Museum in New York City presented a 35-year survey of Snyder’s work^[8][9] that traveled to the Danforth Museum of Art in Framingham, Massachusetts. The exhibition was accompanied by a monograph, Joan Snyder, with an introduction by Norman Kleeblatt and essays by Hayden Herrera and Jenni Sorkin.

In 2011, Dancing With The Dark: Joan Snyder Prints 1963-2010 opened at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, and traveled to Boston University Art Gallery, Boston, MA;^[10] University of Richmond Museums, Richmond, VA; University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM accompanied by a comprehensive exhibition catalogue with an essay by the curator, Marilyn Symmes.

Snyder’s work can be found in many public collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Jewish Museum, The Guggenheim, The High Museum of Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Chicago Art Institute, The Phillips Collection, The Dallas Museum of Fine Art and The National Museum of Women in the Arts.

References

Further reading

• Herrera, Hayden (2006). Joan Snyder. Harry N Abrams. ISBN 0810992183. 
• Klaus, Ottoman (2008). Joan Snyder ...and seeking the sublime. Nielsen Gallery. ISBN 978-0-9713548-5-2. 
• Symmes, Marilyn (2011). Dancing with the Dark: Joan Snyder Prints 1963-2010. Prestel. ISBN 3791351060. 

External links

• Joan Snyder at ArtCyclopedia
• Joan Snyder at Artnet
• Interview with Phong Bui
• Full Biography at Nielsen Gallery