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 June - 9 August 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 September - 15 October 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 February - 3 April 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 August - 22 September 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 June - 20 July 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 January - 14 February 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 January - 16 February 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 June - 20 July 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
Close at GRIMM March 4–April 6, 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
Macho: Representing Masculinity at ANOTHER SPACE November 17, 2022–April 15, 2023Hugh Steers included in the group exhbibiton Macho: Representing Masculinity at ANOTHER SPACE in New York.
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Hugh Steers
Every Moment Counts – AIDS and its Feelings at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter February 18–May 22, 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
We Are Family at New York Academy of Art February 1–March 6, 2022Hugh Steers included in We Are Family, a group exhibition at the New York Academy of Art, NY.
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Hugh Steers: Blue Towel, Red Tank
David Zwirner Gallery, Paris, France December 4, 2021–January 29, 2022Hugh 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
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The Best New York Exhibitions this July at MoMA, Gladstone Gallery, and More
Whitewall10 July 2024 With endless talent spread around the city, here are some of our New York City exhibition favorites for summer 2024,... Read more -
Hugh Steers’ Paintings Captured Bleakness and Hope
Art and Object8 July 2024 Conjuring Tenderness: Paintings from 1987, an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Hugh Steers (1962–1995), recently opened at... Read more -
The Approval Matrix: Everyone's a Pundit
New York Magazine28 June 2024 Highbrow, Brilliant: Hugh Steers at Alexander Gray. ... View full graphic at nymag.com . Read more -
Five Highlights From Detroit’s Queer Art Biennial
Hyperallergic23 June 2024 DETROIT — The Mighty Real/Queer Detroit biennial isn’t notable just because of its dedication to LGBTQ+ representation — though that... Read more -
Power, space and fantasy: what to look out for at Art Basel 2023
Wallpaper*12 June 2023 Nature, ecology, queer perspectives and quantum physics intertwine in a web of fantastical references at Art Basel 2023 (15 –... Read more -
5 Late LGBTQ+ Artists Finally Getting Their Due
Artsy9 June 2023 LGBTQ+ artists have long been excluded from popular narratives and public recognition both in art history and the art market.... Read more -
Explore 120 years of exceptional art in Art Basel’s Online Viewing Rooms
Art Basel5 June 2023 Artworks are invaluable markers of history, coded with the events, social dynamics, and cultural shifts of their era. In Art... Read more -
Hugh Steers, the painter who looked AIDS in the face
Télérama19 December 2021 Hugh Steers loved to paint cats, high heels and bathtubs. The latter illuminate, with their whiteness, many of his paintings,... Read more -
David Zwirner Plans Exhibition Series to Mark AIDS Pandemic’s Beginning
ARTnews11 May 2021 To mark 40th anniversary of the beginning of the AIDS pandemic, when the CDC published the first scientific acknowledgement of... Read more -
4 Art Gallery Shows to See Right Now
The New York Times24 March 2021 Hugh Steers Through April 3. Alexander Gray Associates, 510 West 26th Street, Manhattan, (212) 399-2636, alexandergray.com . When the artist... Read more -
Hugh Steers
The New Yorker17 March 2021 “Strange State of Being,” the title of Steers’s current show at Alexander Gray Associates, is how the painter described his... Read more -
Hugh Steers Melds Queerness and the Devotional
Hyperallergic16 March 2021 Spanning 1987–1993, Strange State of Being illustrates that illness by no means negates intimacy. The exhibition, now on view at... Read more -
Can a New Arts Center Revitalize Provincetown?
The New York Times2 July 2020 PROVINCETOWN, Mass. — There was only one destination of choice for the literary set looking to leave New York City... Read more -
Frieze LA Makes Its Long-Awaited Debut
Cultured Magazine15 February 2019 The minute the VIP session of the first-ever edition of Frieze Los Angeles opened this morning at Paramount Pictures Studios,... Read more -
A Certain Gorgeous Bleakness
Gay and Lesbian Review4 May 2018 MAKING ART is difficult. Doing it when you’re struggling with an illness you know is going to kill you is... Read more -
Hugh Steers, Alexander Gray Associates
Artforum5 April 2015 New York City’s cramped tenement apartments were the standard setting for painter Hugh Steers (1962–1995). Within these intimate environs, Steers... Read more -
Hunger of Memory, by Guy Trebay
The Village Voice14 February 2006 This story was originally published December 5, 1995. I saw Hugh Steers yesterday on lower Broadway, caught sight of him... Read more -
Art in Review
The New York Times4 November 1994 Hugh Steers' earlier paintings had two very different types of images: male couples tenderly helping each other dress or bathe,... Read more -
Hugh Steers
Artforum5 November 1992 In his most recent paintings and smaller oil sketches, Hugh Steers chronicles contemporary urban life haunted by the presence of... Read more
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