#pat steir

Pat Steir

July Waterfall

Pat Steir (1938–2026)

Widely regarded as a pioneer of postmodern abstraction, she is most famous for her iconic "Waterfall" series, which she began in the late 1980s.

In these works, she famously abandoned traditional brushwork to pour and splash thinned oil paint onto large canvases, allowing gravity and chance to create cascading, luminous compositions.

She was a trailblazer for women in the male-dominated New York art scene a founding member of the feminist journal Heresies.

Born Iris Patricia Sukoneck in Newark, New Jersey, she studied at the Pratt Institute and Boston University. Throughout her five-decade career, she also worked as an art director at Harper & Row and helped found the Printed Matter bookstore. In 2017, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

Her work is held in permanent collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Whitney Museum, Tate Gallery, and the Guggenheim Museum.

Rest in Power !

Pat Steir’s studio

Pat Steir