Joan Snyder
Installation view of the exhibition “Hyundai Card First Look: Joan Snyder,” April 23, 2026 - Fall 2026. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo by Jonathan Dorado. Digital Image © 2026 The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
In 1966, artist Joan Snyder wrote in her MFA thesis: “I am interested in forms, colors, shapes…. I am also interested in people, nature, the nature surrounding people and the people surrounding nature. I know that landscapes have overtones of human presence, and perhaps vice versa. I know love, hate, anxiety, fear, and humor. My paintings and sculpture invariably mention all of these things. I bring all of these beliefs to my altar and ask that it not be explained too logically.”
Sixty years later, on the occasion of the presentation of her work My August (2023) at MoMA as part of the Hyundai Card First Look series, Snyder generously sat down with us to reflect on her expansive career and densely layered artworks. Snyder fills her artworks with symbolic references and experimental materials, drawing on the range of human experiences and natural environment she declared her inspiration at the outset of her career. The resulting dynamic paintings fulfill her early goals of conveying the ways we connect to nature—and each other—that transcend language.
Read full article at moma.org/magazine.