Joan Snyder

Biography

Born April 16, 1940, in Highland Park, NJ, Joan Snyder received her A.B. from Douglass College, New Brunswick, NJ, in 1962 and her M.F.A. from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, in 1966. Joan Snyder was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1974, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1983. In 2007, Snyder received a Mac Arthur Fellowship. She currently lives in Brooklyn and Woodstock, NY.

Joan Snyder's introduction into the New York art world began with a series of "Stroke" Paintings completed in the 1970s. These paintings were included in the Whitney 1973 Biennial and the Corcoran 1975 Biennial, and were the basis of her first solo shows in New York City and San Francisco. Although Joan Snyder's paintings are often placed under various art-movement umbrellas -- Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Expressionism, and Feminist Art -- her work has always been difficult to categorize. The changing nature of Snyder's work, with its combination of personal iconography, female imagery, aggressive brushstroke and accomplished formalism, has kept her steadily untagged.

In 2005, she had a 35-year survey show at The Jewish Museum in New York City, which then traveled to the Danforth Museum in Framingham, Massachusetts. In conjunction with this touring exhibition, Abrams Books published a monograph: Joan Snyder with an introduction by Norman Kleeblatt and essays by Hayden Herrera and Jenni Sorkin.

Select Honors and Awards

Joan Snyder received a MacArthur Fellowship, often referred to as the Genius Award, in 2007. She has received several other honors for her painting including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1983 and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1974.

Further Reading

• Ottmann, Klaus, Joan Snyder ...and seeking the sublime, Nielsen Gallery, 2008 ISBN 978-0-9713548-5-2
• Interview with Phong Bui
• Full Biography
  
• Images from the Nielsen Gallery