American artist Joan Snyder has joined Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, marking a significant development in her career.
Represented by the gallery in Europe and Asia in collaboration with Canada Gallery in the US, Snyder’s work will now have an expanded international reach. Her inaugural solo exhibition with Thaddaeus Ropac is scheduled for November 2024 at the gallery’s London location.
Snyder’s paintings are currently featured in two prominent exhibitions: “Painterly Gestures” at Tate Modern, London, and “Making Their Mark” at the Shah Garg Foundation in New York. Her works are held in major institutional collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern in London, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
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“Joan Snyder’s important contribution to the field of American abstraction from the 1970s onwards is distinguished by her intuition for fearless mark making and composition,” Ropac told ARTnews in an email. “Her practice over the course of nearly six decades has remained steadfast to a deeply felt truth.”
Snyder’s contribution to American abstraction has been significant, as she consciously worked against the male-dominated conventions of Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism, and Color Field painting. Her paintings often incorporate personal motifs such as roses, totems, and abstracted figures, challenging the boundaries of traditional painting techniques.
Organized into three main groups of work—Strokes, Symphonies, and Fields—Snyder’s oeuvre explores various themes and formal approaches. The Strokes feature brightly colored bars dancing across canvases, while the Symphonies evoke the influence of music in her artmaking. The Field paintings, inspired by rural landscapes, reflect Snyder’s personal and mythical narratives, utilizing an allover treatment of the canvas to express ideas of renewal and transformation.
Last year at Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale, Snyder’s 1973 picture The Stripper nearly quadrupled its high estimate of $120,000 to sell for $478,800, a record for the artist at auction. The following day, that success was repeated in the Post-War & Contemporary Art Day Sale, where her large canvas, Celebration (1979), sold for $239,400 against a high estimate of $50,000. (Both prices include fees.)