Man and IV, 1994
Oil on canvas
65 x 47 in (165.1 x 119.38 cm)
Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Blue Uniform, 1991
Oil on canvas
66 x 72 in (167.64 x 182.88 cm)
Collection of The Minneapolis Institute of Art
Bath Curtain, 1992
Oil on canvas
64 1/2 x 72 1/2 in (163.8 x 184.2 cm)
Official Letter, 1990
Oil on canvas
50 x 44 1/8 in (127 x 112.01 cm)
Purple Drape, 1988
Oil on gessoed paper
10 1/4 x 11 1/4 in (26.16 x 28.7 cm)
Collection of the Yale University Art Gallery
Bed Pan, 1993
Oil on canvas
65 1/4 x 72 1/8 in (165.89 x 183.21 cm)
Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art
Flag, 1990
Oil on canvas
52 1/4 x 60 in (132.72 x 152.4 cm)
Collection of the Denver Art Museum
Sleeping Cat, 1988
Oil on canvas
39 1/2 x 47 1/2 in (100.3 x 120.7 cm)
Self Portrait with No Right Ear, 1985
Oil on canvas
14 x 12 7/8 in (35.56 x 32.77 cm)
Maroon Shed, 1991
Oil on canvas
60 x 60 x 2 1/4 in (152.4 x 152.4 x 5.7 cm)
Title unknown, c. 1988
Oil on gessoed paper
24 3/4 x 22 1/4 in (62.9 x 56.5 cm)
Collection of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University
White Gown, 1994
Oil on canvas
78 1/8 x 64 1/8 in (198.4 x 162.9 cm)
Hospital Bed, 1993
Oil on canvas
61 1/4 x 65 1/8 in (155.7 x 165.35 cm)
Breathalyzer, 1989
Oil on gessoed paper
11 1/4 x 12 in (28.7 x 30.48 cm)
Purple Rug, 1990
Oil on gessoed paper
11 1/8 x 13 3/8 in (28.45 x 34.04 cm)
Two Beers, 1993
Oil on canvas
60 x 56 1/8 in (152.4 x 142.56 cm)
Stripes and Plaid, 1994
Oil on canvas
67 x 78 x 1 5/8 in (170.18 x 198.12 x 4.13 cm)
Collection of the Walker Art Center
Poster, 1990
Oil on canvas
42 1/8 x 51 x 2 1/8 in (107 x 129.54 x 5.71 cm)
White Satin, 1993
Oil on canvas
60 1/8 x 63 1/8 in (153.03 x 160.34 cm)
Grey Mattress, 1988
Oil on canvas
64 1/2 x 67 3/4 in (163.8 x 172.1 cm)
Door to Tub, 1993
Oil on canvas
65 1/8 x 44 x 1 1/4 in (165.4 x 111.8 x 3.2 cm)
Book and Bag II, 1989
Oil on gessoed paper
14 1/2 x 10 1/2 in (36.83 x 26.67 cm)
Blue Dress, 1992
Oil on canvas
71 7/8 x 60 1/8 in (182.6 x 152.7 cm)
Flag, Megaphone, 1992
Oil on canvas
72 x 58 1/8 in (182.88 x 147.64 cm)
Clean Up, 1987
Oil on gessoed paper
15 x 11 1/4 in (38.1 x 28.6 cm)
Hugh Steers in his studio at Yale, c.1985
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.
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.
Hugh 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); 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.
Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN
New School for Social Research, New York, NY
Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
Hugh Steers is included in the group exhibition Close curated by Russel Tovey at GRIMM Gallery in London, United Kingdom.
Hugh Steers included in the group exhbibiton Macho: Representing Masculinity at ANOTHER SPACE in New York.
Hugh Steers included in Every Moment Counts – AIDS and its Feelings, a group exhibition at the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Høvikodden, Norway.
Hugh Steers included in We Are Family, a group exhibition at the New York Academy of Art, NY.
Hugh 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.
