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Directed by: Veronica Gonzalez Peña
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Released: 2020 (educational)
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Year of Production: 2017
Running Time: 77 min
Language: English
Subtitle Options: English Closed Captions
Subjects: Art & Culture, Women's Studies
Pat Steir has been at the forefront of American painting for decades. With an artistic practice that spans half a century, she is a leading force in the development of Conceptual Abstraction.
Pat Steir: Artist is the first film ever made about this groundbreaking woman painter. Culled from over 30 hours of candid interviews with Veronica Gonzalez Peña, Steir touchingly evokes her childhood in New Jersey, her young adulthood in NY, her involvement in feminist groups and artistic movements, as well as her deep friendships and alliances with the most influential artists and poets of her generation, including Sol Lewitt, Agnes Martin, John Cage, Anne Waldman, and Sylvère Lotringer.
Pat Steir: Artist is an intimate portrait of the artist by novelist/filmmaker Veronica Gonzalez Peña. The warmth and closeness the women feel for each other come across clearly in this visually poetic, highly personal portrait of the great painter. Primarily shot in Steir’s home and studio over the course of 3 years, the film provides a profound, and revelatory portrait of the artist in her world while providing the viewer with a first-hand account of what it is to live an artistically engaged life.
"...poignant lyricism and piercing inquiry governs Pat Steir: Artist." - Vogue
"Meditative and empowering, this is a must-see." - Galerie Magazine
"...an intimate, ruminative documentary..." - The New York Times
"...fascinating..." - The New York Review of Books
"The film isn’t a typical artist documentary." - ARTnews
"...very inspiring..." - Musée Magazine
"...a poetic visual exploration of creativity and process..." - artdaily
About the filmmaker
Veronica Gonzalez Peña was born in Mexico City, and raised in Ohio and California. In 2003 she founded rockypoint press, a series of artist/writer collaborative prints, books, and films (rockypointpress.net). In 2008 her first novel, Twin Time: or how death befell me, was awarded the Aztlán Literary Prize for best novel. Her second novel, The Sad Passions has been called lyrical,emotionally moving, and stylistically innovative. Additionally, Veronica’s book/pamphlet on the Mexican Drug War, So Far From God, was included as part of the semiotext(e) exhibition in the last Whitney Biennial; her first play, Neck of the Woods, premiered in Manchester 2015, and starred Charlotte Rampling and Helene Grimaud.
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