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Artworks
Hugh Steers
Two Men and a Woman, 1992Oil on canvas60 1/4 x 57 1/4 x 1 1/4 in (153 x 145.4 x 3.2 cm)EHS023Further images
Before his death from AIDS-related complications in 1995, Hugh Steers created a series of emotionally-charged paintings that directly or obliquely address the devastation of the epidemic. These melancholy images amplify...Before his death from AIDS-related complications in 1995, Hugh Steers created a series of emotionally-charged paintings that directly or obliquely address the devastation of the epidemic. These melancholy images amplify the artist’s own hopes and fears, exploring diverse issues like mortality, isolation, defiance, and compassion.
Emerging from this body of work, Two Men and a Woman (1992) depicts a woman bathing a man in a bathtub as another figure assists. Suffused with a tenderness wrought from suffering, the composition’s soft light and exaggerated perspective underscore the poignancy of the scene, as well as the nude man’s vulnerability. Ultimately, the touching image recalls Steers’s assertion, “A lot of my art has to do with that primal idea of drawing a painting of the hunt on the side of the cave. … It’s like a conjuring. 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.”
Provenance
Estate of Hugh Steers
Alexander Gray Associates, New York, NY
Private Collection, France
Exhibitions
2021: Hugh Steers: Strange State of Being, Alexander Gray Associates, New York, NY
2018: Intimacy, Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, NY
Literature
Soboleva, Ksenia M. “Hugh Steers Melds Queerness and the Devotional.” Hyperallergic, March 16, 2021.
Publications
Schröder, Barbara and Karen Kelly, eds. Hugh Steers: The Complete Paintings, 1983-1994. New York: Visual AIDS, 2015, pp. 150, 228.
