Pat Steir
1938–2026 · American painter and printmaker, a key figure in drip and pour abstraction
Pat Steir (Newark, New Jersey, 1938 – New York, 2026) was an American painter and printmaker whose work moved from conceptual art and minimalism toward abstraction built on dripping, splashing and pouring paint. She is best known for her "Waterfall" paintings, begun in the 1980s, and for site-specific wall drawings.
After studying at the Pratt Institute and Boston University, she had her first solo show in 1964 and her first museum exhibition came in 1973 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington. In the 1970s she painted roses and other images that she crossed out. In the late 1980s, influenced by John Cage and Agnes Martin, she began dripping, splashing and pouring paint, embracing chance. Later she limited her palette to monochrome. Her work is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and by the Tate.
Her legacy rests on her contribution to process-based abstraction and on her founding role in the Printed Matter bookshop and the feminist journal Heresies. She taught at Parsons, Princeton and Hunter College.