Dark Release

Artist Joan Snyder (American, born 1940)

Date1982

Mediummixed media on canvas

Dimensionscanvas: 182.9 x 365.8 cm (72 x 144 in.)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineGift of Elizabeth Olan Hirsch in memory of Rabbi Levi A. Olan and Sarita Messer Olan

Terms

Object number2000.61

Label TextJoan Snyder came of age as a painter during the early 1970s, a time when the convergence of feminism and abstraction yielded a profoundly human and openly subjective alternative to the pervasive aesthetics and objective claims of Minimalism. “The strokes in my paintings,” she wrote, “speak of my life and experiences.” In the four decades since, Snyder’s strokes of paint have continued to explore the narrative potential of abstraction and to offer newly expressive, deeply personal, and materially rich experiences. The horizontally expansive Dark Release is a composite of spontaneous gestures and organized shapes (triangles suggestive of mountains or sails), pure pigment and collaged bits of fabric and wood. About the painting’s “strange dark palette” and “primitive elements,” Snyder recently recalled, “This was not an easy time in my life…Dark Release is a vast landscape that goes to an unusual and dark place for me. And all that in spite of all of the gold paint which often in those years signified something loud and glorious. Who knows?”ProvenanceElizabeth Hirsch

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