Joan Snyder

Joan Snyder (b. 1940) is an American painter whose work has expanded the language of abstraction through gesture, material experimentation, and autobiographical content. She first came to attention in the early 1970s with her “stroke” paintings, structured around repeated marks and gridded fields, before developing more layered compositions incorporating text, symbols, and materials such as fabric, seeds, herbs, and other collage elements. Her work is closely associated with feminist art while remaining grounded in the formal questions of postwar American painting. Snyder received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2007, was included in the 1973 Whitney Biennial, and was the subject of Joan Snyder: A Painting Survey, 1969–2005 at The Jewish Museum. Her work is held by MoMA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.