JOAN SNYDER

Selected Paintings 1999 - 2007

January 9 – April 18, 2009

MacArthur Fellow Joan Snyder’s prolific painting career spans four decades.  Carl Solway Gallery features selected paintings from 1999-2007 for the current exhibition.  Snyder’s highly individual approach to abstract painting focuses on the sensory qualities of paint. She combines personal iconography, aggressive brushwork and accomplished formalism.

These traits and her boundless experimentation with additive surface materials such as herbs, papier mâché, straw and fabric, prevent her work from being neatly categorized within any specific art movement.  Viewers may detect aspects of Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Expressionism and feminist content, but the combination is uniquely Snyder’s.

In 2005, the Jewish Museum in New York City presented a 35-year retrospective of her work, which traveled to the Danforth Museum of Art in Framingham, Massachusetts.  Snyder was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2007.

Born in New Jersey in 1940, she received her M.F.A. from Rutgers University.  Her earlier awards included fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1974 and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1983.   Her work can be seen in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art and The Jewish Museum, all in New York City; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, High Museum of Art in Atlanta and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  Snyder currently lives in Brooklyn and Woodstock, New York.