Pat Steir

Pat Steir, a painter whose abstract art, especially her "Waterfalls" series, was acclaimed and beloved, died March 25, 2026, in New York City at the age of 87.

In a career spanning more than five decades, Steir helped redefine what painting could be: not simply an act of pure intention, but as a collaboration between artist, material, and the pull of gravity itself. She proved that relinquishing control could be its own form of mastery, and she blazed a trail as one of the first women to achieve lasting prominence in New York's male-dominated art world, inspiring generations of painters who followed.

Born Iris Patricia Sukoneck on April 10, 1938, in Newark, New Jersey, Steir loved art all her life, sometimes skipping school in favor of a trip to the nearby Philadelphia Museum of Art. Her artistic nature ran in the family; both of her parents attended art school, though neither became a professional artist. She attended New York City's Pratt Institute and the Boston University College of Fine Arts.

In the early years of her art career, Steir took jobs as an illustrator and an art director at the publishing house Harper & Row. She made art when she wasn't at her day job, and by 1964, she had her first solo exhibition at the Terry Dintenfass Gallery in New York City.

In the 1970s, Steir began teaching at such institutions as Parsons School of Design and Princeton University. She also gained broader recognition for her work in that decade, landing her first museum engagement at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. She began working as a printmaker, and she co-founded the Printed Matter bookstore in New York City, a shop focusing on artists' books.

It was in the late 1980s that Steir began developing the style by which she became best remembered. For her "Waterfalls" series, she would climb a ladder to reach the top of a large canvas, where she would apply paint and let it drip down. Sometimes she spilled the paint on the canvas; sometimes she splashed it there or used a brush to paint layers thick enough to run down.

In a 2012 interview for ARTnews, Steir talked about how her "Waterfalls" paintings were not entirely within her control. "It's chance within limitations. I decide the colors and make simple divisions to the canvas, and then basically the pouring of the paint paints the painting… It changes as it pours down. Gravity becomes my collaborator. The way the thing works is always in part a surprise."

Paintings in the "Waterfalls" series have sold for price tags in the millions of dollars.

Steir's work has been exhibited around the world at such museums as New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland, and the Honolulu Museum of Art.

She is survived by her husband, Joost Elffers and her niece, Lily Sukoneck-Cohen.

By Linnea Crowther

(Image: AMBER DE VOS/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)