Pat Steir Makes Impact with Newest Piece: Color Wheel

Image courtesy of The Hirshhorn

By Angela Hickey

Popular artist Pat Steir has once again amazed the public with her newest installation, “Pat Steir: Color Wheel.” This piece, currently located in the Hirshhorn museum, is one of the largest installations the museum has ever hosted. Spanning the entire circumference of one the museum’s second floor circular galleries, this piece creates an immense color wheel that shifts hues with each painting.

Pat Steir has made a career for herself as an accomplished artist and printmaker. Interestingly, the artist’s early work leaned more towards minimalism and conceptual art. Steir, though, is more widely known for both her large-scale abstract “Waterfall” paintings, which she started in the 1980s, and for her later site-specific wall drawings. 

The Hirshhorn Museum has been home to numerous pieces of contemporary art since its opening in 1974. Throughout the museum’s first ten years, much of the focus centered on the collection itself, with founding director Abram Lerner overseeing the research, conservation, and installation of over 6,000 objects. But today, the facility is filled with pieces and exhibitions from contemporary artists from all over the world. The museum has also instituted educational and technological initiatives, cementing its place among the world’s most forward-thinking art institutions. 

This exhibition in particular, “Pat Steir: Color Wheel”, has been the largest site-specific exhibition the museum has ever held with one artist to date, opening originally on October 24, 2019. Her iconic style is captured perfectly by this exhibition, made from twenty-eight large-scale paintings. This exhibit is the first solo exhibition that Steir has done in Washington, D.C. in five years. 

Being housed in one of the Hirshhorn museum’s second floor circular gallery areas, these floor to ceiling canvases stretch nearly four hundred linear feet around the circumference of the gallery. Each piece is painted a different hue in order to capture the subtle shift of color on each canvas. The gallery reflects her signature technique, echoing the metaphysical ideas of harmony with nature, prominently expressed in Zen Buddhist and Daoist thought. 

This exhibition enamors visitors as they move through the space really exploring the spectrums of the wheel itself. Each solid color canvas is complemented by a waterfall of color popping out from the monochrome background. By walking around the gallery, visitors are able to watch as the canvases shift hues and reflect every aspect of the color wheel, as seen by Steir.

Steir has always been well known for her deep and meaningful pieces, and this exhibition is no different. Her easily recognizable and iconic style is on full display in this breathtaking exhibition. “Pat Steir: Color Wheel” is very reflective of the artist’s personality, revealing to visitors how she sees and interprets something that the world has looked at the same way for centuries. 

“Pat Steir: Color Wheel” is free and open to the public. Located at the Hirshhorn Museum on the second floor. This exhibition is open for viewing from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. This exhibit will be open to the public until January 18, 2021.