In Memoriam: Pat Steir (1938–2026)
The Museum mourns the loss of collection artist Pat Steir, one of the great innovators across contemporary painting, drawing, and printmaking. We look forward to paying tribute to Pat Steir and her exceptional life at our 2026 Midsummer Gala this July, and a focused exhibition of her work is planned for Summer 2027. Steir was a beloved member of the artist community on the East End of Long Island. An important abstract painter with a deep connection to this place, she will be featured in the Parrish group show Abstract Expressionism: The East End, 1940 to Today (September 27, 2026–February 14, 2027), following participation in the 2021 exhibition Affinities for Abstraction: Women Artists on Eastern Long Island, 1950-2020.
Steir rose to prominence in the late 1970s and 1980s for her iconographic canvases and immersive wall drawings, and subsequently for her rigorous pouring technique seen in her Waterfall works, in which she harnessed the forces of gravity and gesture to create paintings of astonishing lyricism. Her work was informed by a deep engagement with art history and Eastern philosophy, as well as a commitment to material exploration and experimentation.
As a student, she became acquainted with many influential conceptual and minimalist artists, figures that would become Steir’s lifelong friends, such as Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, and Lawrence Weiner. Shortly after graduating, Steir was invited to participate in her first group exhibition at The High Museum in Atlanta, and a year later at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. These shows helped position her among the first group of women artists to gain recognition in the male-dominated art scene of the time.
Steir also became friends with artists Mary Heilmann and Joan Jonas in the early 1970s, participating in an improvisational film by Jonas and joining Heilmann and Joan Snyder in a three-person exhibition at the Paley & Lowe gallery. Her close friendship with composer John Cage, who embraced chaos and non-intention in his work, inspired her to see new potential for accident and chance in artmaking.
In the 1970s, she taught painting at the California Institute of the Arts, where Ross Bleckner and David Salle were among her students. Steir was a founding board member of both the Printed Matter bookshop and the landmark feminist journal Heresies, whose members include artists Nina Yankowitz, Joyce Kozloff, and Michelle Stuart, among others.
Our heartfelt thoughts are with her husband, Joost Elffers, her niece Lily Sukoneck-Cohen, and her extended community and family.
Image: Portrait of Pat Steir, 2018. Photo: Grace Roselli, Pandora’s BoxX Project. © Pat Steir, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
