Nonagenarian painter Joan Semmel is preparing for a major career moment with a retrospective at the Jewish Museum and a dual-city exhibition, 'Continuities', at Alexander Gray Associates in New York and Brussels. At 93, Semmel continues to produce large-scale, vibrant works from her SoHo studio that focus on the aging female nude, using her own body as a primary reference. The new works, including 'Here I Am' (2025), maintain her lifelong commitment to depicting the female form through a non-idealized, authentic lens that rejects the traditional male gaze.
Semmel’s resurgence highlights a significant shift in institutional recognition for feminist pioneers who were previously marginalized by the mainstream art world. While her 1970s works—which challenged patriarchal depictions of women by artists like de Kooning—were once rejected by museums, they are now highly sought after by the same institutions. Her current visibility serves as both a celebration of her technical mastery and a political reminder of the ongoing struggle for gender equality and bodily autonomy in the contemporary cultural climate.