Joanna Pousette-Dart

Joanna Pousette-Dart is an American abstract artist renowned for her unique shaped-canvas paintings.

Biography of Joanna Pousette-Dart

Joanna Pousette-Dart was born in New York City in 1947 to poet Evelyn Gracey and painter Richard Pousette-Dart, a prominent abstract expressionist and founding member of the New York School of painting. Her grandparents, Flora and Nathaniel Pousette-Dart, were also notable figures in the art world, with Flora being a poet and musician, and Nathaniel a painter. 

Pousette-Dart pursued her art education at Bennington College, where she earned her BA in 1968. Following her graduation, Pousette-Dart held various jobs while dedicating her spare time to painting, eventually securing a teaching position at Ramapo College in 1972.

Her artistic career gained momentum when she was featured in the Whitney Biennial in 1973, followed by group exhibitions at prestigious institutions such as MoMA, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the Danforth Art Museum over the next decade.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Pousette-Dart showcased her work in solo exhibitions at the Susan Caldwell Gallery in New York (1974–83) and the Janus Gallery in Los Angeles (1981). She also spent periods living and working in New Mexico, where the vast landscapes profoundly influenced her artistic direction from the 1990s onwards.

In addition to her teaching role at Hunter College and the New York Studio School, Pousette-Dart held positions as a guest artist at various institutions, including Yale University.

In recognition of her contributions to the arts, she was elected as a National Academician by The National Academy of Design in New York in 2021.

Joanna Pousette-Dart's recent solo exhibitions include "Small Paintings" at Lisson Gallery in Shanghai (2022), "Nocturnes" at Lisson Gallery in East Hampton (2022), "Joanna Pousette-Dart" at Lisson Gallery in London (2021), "Floating World" at Locks Gallery in Philadelphia, and many more. 

Pousette-Dart's paintings have also been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including "Structuring Light" at Maruani Mercier Gallery in Brussels (2022), "Consequences: A Parlor Game" at National Academy of Design in New York (2022), "Selected Works" at Lisson Gallery in New York (2021), "Reframing Minimalism: McArthur Binion and his Contemporaries in New York, 1973-1992" at Richard Gray Gallery in New York (2020), among others. 

Joanna Pousette-Dart's Art Style

Joanna Pousette-Dart is renowned for her distinctive shaped-canvas paintings, often comprising two or three stacked, curved-edge planes. These compositions, ranging from subtly precarious to nested arrangements, evoke a fleeting balance with the potential for movement. 

Her shaped paintings uniquely blend formal and poetic considerations, drawing inspiration from diverse sources such as Islamic, Mozarabic, and Catalonian art, Chinese landscape paintings and calligraphy, as well as Mayan and American Indian art, among others.

Her paintings manifest in various forms, each exuding its own dynamic interplay of expansion and compression, buoyancy and gravity. The painted contours of the interior shapes add layers of complexity, sometimes harmonizing with the canvas contours, while other times challenging them. Pousette-Dart's adept use of color infuses all elements with a luminosity reminiscent of the natural world.