Pat Steir, the acclaimed American painter known for her Waterfall series, died in Manhattan on 25 March at age 87. The article traces her career from early struggles as a freelance illustrator and art director, through her transformative encounter with Sol LeWitt in the early 1970s, to her eventual emergence as a major figure in contemporary painting. It highlights her teaching at CalArts and Parsons, her involvement with feminist and artist-run institutions like Heresies and Printed Matter, and the pivotal moment in the early 1980s when she cut up a reproduction of a Jan Brueghel the Elder flower painting into 64 panels, repainting each in a different historical style.
Steir's story matters because she represents a generation of women artists who were long overlooked by the art world and only achieved widespread recognition later in life. Her Waterfall series, begun in the late 1980s, placed her among the great late-blooming artists of the 20th century, demonstrating that sustained ambition and devotion to painting could overcome institutional biases. Her career also underscores the importance of feminist and artist-run organizations in supporting marginalized voices, and her work continues to influence contemporary painters navigating questions of abstraction, representation, and artistic lineage.