Joan Snyder
1940–
Introduction
Joan Snyder (born April 16, 1940) is an American painter from New York. She is a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow (1974).
Snyder first gained public attention in the early 1970s with her "stroke paintings," which used a grid to deconstruct and retell the story of abstract painting. By the late seventies, Snyder had abandoned the formality of using a background grid. She began more explicitly incorporating symbols and text, as the paintings took on a more complex materiality. These early works were included in the 1973 and 1981 Whitney Biennials and the 1975 Corcoran Biennial.
Snyder's paintings are narratives of both personal and communal experiences. Through an individual approach and persistent experimentation with technique and materials, Snyder has extended the expressive potential of abstract painting.
Wikidata identifier
Q6205466
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed March 27, 2026.
Country of birth
United States
Roles
Artist, painter
ULAN identifier
500018221
Names
Joan Snyder
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed March 27, 2026.
