Pat Steir: Song

New paintings by the American artist, now 87, make their debut in this exhibition in Zurich

Pat Steir: Song, installation view, Hauser & Wirth Zurich,, 13 June – 13 September 2025. © Pat Steir. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Jon Etter.

Hauser & Wirth, Zurich
13 June – 13 September 2025

by ALLIE BISWAS

Pat Steir had been working for 20 years before she started to make her Waterfallpaintings, beginning in 1988 – a defining moment that saw the American artist developing a new technique that would form the basis of her painting over the following decades. (Steir is now 87 and this exhibition at Hauser & Wirth is her third with the gallery since 2022.) Standing on a ladder, the artist would pour paint on to a canvas that had been attached to the wall, letting the liquid drip all the way down to the edge. She would later comment that “the paint itself makes the picture … Gravity makes the image”, alluding to the status she gives to chance, a necessary component for an artist who is happy to “take myself out of the painting”.

Pat Steir, I Love You Green, 2024-25. Oil on canvas, 182.9 x 121.9 cm (72 x 48 in). © Pat Steir. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Elisabeth Bernstein.

Her process, though, is just as determined by structure as it is dependent on fate, reflected by the dozen or so paintings in the exhibition. It opens with a triad of small, square, blood-red canvases on to which Steir has painted intricate white grids – an organisational device that forms the backdrop to a few horizontal brushstrokes in blue and white. The paint is left to drip vertically from these thick bands of colour; streaks that overtake each other and take on varying widths depending on the brush used by Steir to dispense the paint.

Pat Steir, Mr. and Mrs. Green, 2024-25. Oil on canvas, 182.9 x 121.9 cm (72 x 48 in). © Pat Steir. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Elisabeth Bernstein.

These are studies for the paintings that hang in the main room, which are vibrant and much larger, measuring nearly two metres in height. They show off the artist’s flair for colour. In one, I Love You Green (2024-25), a turquoise background surrounds various blocks piled on top of each painted in different shades of green, ranging from lime to forest. The drips here are sparser and fleeting, as though the artist has used them to lightly scratch the surface rather than dominate it. There is an orange iteration close by, Mr and Mrs Green (2024-25), that repeats this exercise in tonal comparisons. The painted blocks are more pronounced in this work, extending across a palette of green as well as pink. Reminiscent of colour charts, there is a technical element to these harmonious compositions, as though Steir is carrying out a considered experiment.

Pat Steir, Blue with Red, Yellow, and Silver, 2024-25. Oil on canvas, 182.9 x 121.9 cm (72 x 48 in). © Pat Steir. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Elisabeth Bernstein.

The most classical of the group, closest to the earliest Waterfall works made by Steir, is a sea blue canvas drenched in white drips, Blue with Red, Yellow, and Silver (2024-25). Another white grid lightly grazes the surface, but Steir allows the numerous streaks of poured paint to flood the surface, this time from top to bottom. The artist has explained that after the paint has hit the canvas, it cannot be adjusted. (“When I put a mark down, that’s the mark. I don’t change it.”) The point might reiterate her commitment to that which is outside of her control, but as the paintings here reveal, it also acknowledges the importance of Steir’s own intentions, which has resulted in a still-growing body of paintings that are realised through methods that operate equally between the known and the unknown.

Pat Steir, Untitled, 2024-25. Oil on canvas, 61 x 61 cm (24 x 24 in). © Pat Steir. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Elisabeth Bernstein.