Hugh Steers
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Biography
Hugh Steers (1962–1995) was born in Washington, D.C., and trained in painting at Yale University, New Haven, CT and Parsons School of Art and Design, New York, NY. Before his death at 32 from AIDS-related complications, Steers created allegorical images of everyday life that captured the emotional and political tenor of New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Embracing representational painting and figuration at a time when such approaches were deemed unfashionable, his intimate compositions are poignant symbols of life under the specter of AIDS.
Deeply influenced by art history, Steers mined the Western canon for inspiration to create intimate, surreal, and compelling paintings filled with elements that paid homage to disparate artists, including El Greco, Édouard Vuillard, Edward Hopper, and Paul Cadmus. In an interview shortly before his death, the artist expanded on his approach, musing: “I think I'm in the tradition of a certain kind of American artist—artists whose work embodies a certain gorgeous bleakness. Edward Hopper, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline—they all had this austere beauty to them. They found beauty in the most brutal forms. I think that's what characterizes America, the atmosphere, its culture, its cities and landscape. They all have that soft glow of brutality.”
Dedicated to capturing the “soft glow of brutality,” Steers’s compositions communicate joy even in the face of despair. At the same time, by painting mundane moments imbued with a disconcerting charge, his paintings invite ambiguous narratives of mortality, defiance, and compassion. For Steers, such narratives reflected his own desires. As he explained, “I would like to be able to act or have someone care about me the way some of the people in my paintings act or care about each other. It’s as if painting it will make it become real.”
Transforming prosaic scenes and spaces into tableaux suffused with longing, loneliness, fear, and eroticism, Steers’s work inhabits a melancholy architecture of intense emotion. His images—sensuous and unsettling—gain new resonance in a contemporary art landscape informed by a return to figuration and a critical reappraisal of art from the 1980s and early 1990s.
Steers’s paintings have been featured in Every Moment Counts—AIDS and its Feelings at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway (2022), Any distance between us at RISD Museum, Providence, RI (2021), AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism at the Museum of the City of New York, NY (2017), and Art AIDS America, curated by Jonathan Katz and Rock Hushka, at the Tacoma Art Museum, WA (2015); West Hollywood Library and One Archives Gallery and Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2015); Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, GA (2016); The Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY (2016); and Alphawood Foundation, Chicago, IL (2016). His work has also been exhibited at ANOTHER SPACE, New York, NY (2023); David Zwirner, Paris, France (2021); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2013); New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY (1994); Richard Anderson, New York, NY (1992); Midtown Galleries, New York, NY (1992); Denver Art Museum, CO (1991); Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY (1988); and The Drawing Center, New York, NY (1987), among others. Steers’s work is in private and public art collections, including the Denver Art Museum, CO; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Walker Art Center, Minnesota, MN; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; among others. In 1989, Steers received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship. A comprehensive monographic catalogue of Steers’s work was published by Visual AIDS in 2015.
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Exhibitions
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Hugh Steers
Conjuring Tenderness: Paintings from 1987 20 Jun - 27 Jul 2024 New YorkAlexander Gray Associates, New York presents Conjuring Tenderness: Paintings from 1987, an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Hugh Steers (1962–1995). The exhibition takes its title from a...Read more -
Between Us
1 Sep - 15 Oct 2023 GermantownAlexander Gray Associates, Germantown presents Between Us, an exhibition gathering works by an intergenerational group of queer artists advancing the practice of portraiture. Confronting the cyclical progress and backlash of...Read more -
Hugh Steers
Strange State of Being 18 Feb - 3 Apr 2021 New YorkAlexander Gray Associates, New York presents Strange State of Being, an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Hugh Steers (1962–1995). A figurative painter, the artist was diagnosed with...Read more -
Hugh Steers
Boxes 30 Aug - 22 Sep 2019 GermantownAlder & Co., 222 Main Street, Germantown NY 12526 Hours: Friday – Sunday 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM Diagnosed in 1987 with HIV, Hugh Steers’ subject matter speaks to his...Read more -
Hugh Steers
The Nullities of Life 6 Jun - 20 Jul 2018 New YorkAlexander Gray Associates presented its third exhibition of work by Hugh Steers (b.1962—d.1995), The Nullities of Life. Before his death at 32 from AIDS related complications, Steers created allegorical images...Read more -
Hugh Steers
Day Light 8 Jan - 14 Feb 2015 New YorkAlexander Gray Associates presented an exhibition of work by Hugh Steers (b.1962, Washington, DC – 1995, New York), including paintings and works on paper produced between 1990 and 1992 that...Read more -
Hugh Steers
12 Jan - 16 Feb 2013 New YorkAlexander Gray Associates was pleased to present its first solo exhibition of works by Hugh Steers, featuring paintings and works on paper produced from 1987–1993. Throughout his career, cut dramatically...Read more -
Cadmus, Steers, Warhol
8 Jun - 20 Jul 2012 New YorkPaul Cadmus Hugh Steers Andy Warhol To inaugurate its representation of the Estate of Hugh Steers, Alexander Gray Associates presented an exhibition contextualizing his work with two generational predecessors, reflecting...Read more
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Public Collections
Denver Art Museum, CO
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN
The New School, New York, NY
Racine Art Museum, WI
Rennie Collection, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT -
News / Events
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Hugh Steers
GRIMM March 4, 2023Hugh Steers is included in the group exhibition Close curated by Russel Tovey at GRIMM Gallery in London, United Kingdom.
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Hugh Steers
ANOTHER SPACE November 17, 2022Hugh Steers included in the group exhbibiton Macho: Representing Masculinity at ANOTHER SPACE in New York.
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Hugh Steers
Henie Onstad Kunstsenter February 18, 2022Hugh Steers included in Every Moment Counts – AIDS and its Feelings, a group exhibition at the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Høvikodden, Norway.
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Hugh Steers
New York Academy of Art February 1, 2022Hugh Steers included in We Are Family, a group exhibition at the New York Academy of Art, NY.
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Hugh Steers
David Zwirner Gallery, Paris, France December 4, 2021Hugh Steers's one person exhibition More Life: Hugh Steers: Blue Towel, Red Tank, curated by Russell Tovey as part of the More Life series, presented at David Zwirner Paris.
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Articles / Reviews