BIOGRAPHY

Joan Semmel (b. 1932, New York, NY) began her painting career in the 1960s while living in Madrid as an Abstract Expressionist, exhibiting in Spain and South America. Returning to New York in 1970, she moved to figuration in response to pornography and concerns around representation of women in culture. Since the late-1980s, Semmel has meditated on the aging female physique. Recent paintings continue the artist’s exploration of self-portraiture and female identity, representing the artist’s body doubled, fragmented, and in-motion. Dissolving the space between artist and model, viewer and subject, the paintings are notable for their celebration of color and flesh. Semmel received her BFA from the Pratt Institute, NY. Her work has been exhibited at Dallas Contemporary, TX; Jewish Museum, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Modern Art, NY; National Museum of Scotland, UK; National Portrait Gallery, DC; Paul Modersohn-Becker Museum, Germany; Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, Germany; and Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, among others. Semmel’s paintings can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Blanton Museum of Art, TX; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Institute of Contemporary Art, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Parrish Art Museum, NY; and Tate Modern, UK, among others. Semmel is based in New York, NY.