Hugh Auchincloss Steers (June 12, 1962 – March 1, 1995) was an American painter whose work is in the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

, the

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...

, and the

Denver Art Museum The Denver Art Museum (DAM) is an art museum located in the Civic Center of Denver, Colorado. With encyclopedic collections of more than 70,000 diverse works from across the centuries and world, the DAM is one of the largest art museums between t ...

. He died of

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...

at the age of 32.

Early life

Steers was born on June 12, 1962, to

Nina Gore Auchincloss Nina Gore Auchincloss Straight (formerly Steers, born January 10, 1937) is an American author, journalist, and socialite. She is the mother of writer/director Burr Steers and artist Hugh Auchincloss Steers, half-sister of Gore Vidal, step-sister of ...

and

Newton Steers Newton Ivan Steers Jr. (January 13, 1917 – February 11, 1993), was a U.S. Congressman who represented Maryland's 8th congressional district from January 3, 1977, to January 3, 1979. Early life Newton Ivan Steers Jr. was born on January 13, ...

. He was the second of three children born to his parents. Steers had two brothers, Ivan Steers the oldest and

Burr Steers Burr Gore Steers is an American actor, screenwriter, and director. His films include ''Igby Goes Down'' (2002) and '' 17 Again'' (2009). He is a nephew of writer Gore Vidal. Family Steers was born in Washington, D.C. His father, Newton Ivan ...

, the youngest, the filmmaker. He attended the

Hotchkiss School The Hotchkiss School is a coeducational University-preparatory school#North America, preparatory school in Lakeville, Connecticut, United States. Hotchkiss is a member of the Eight Schools Association and Ten Schools Admissions Organization. It i ...

Lakeville, Connecticut Lakeville is a census-designated place (CDP) in Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States, close to Dutchess County, New York. It is within the town of Salisbury, but has its own ZIP Code (06039). As of the 2010 census, the population of Lak ...

and graduated from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1985. He later attended

Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture is an artists residency located in Madison, Maine, just outside of Skowhegan. Every year, the program accepts online applications from emerging artists from November through January, and selects 65 t ...

Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and north ...

, graduating in 1991. Steers was the grandson of

Hugh D. Auchincloss Hugh Dudley Auchincloss Jr. (August 15, 1897 – November 20, 1976) was an American stockbroker and lawyer who became the second husband of Nina S. Gore, mother of Gore Vidal, and also the second husband of Janet Lee Bouvier, the mother of Firs ...

and Nina Gore and the great-grandson of

Thomas Gore Thomas Pryor Gore (December 10, 1870March 16, 1949) was an American politician who served as one of the first two United States senators from Oklahoma, from 1907 to 1921 and again from 1931 to 1937. He first entered politics as an activist for ...

. His mother was the half-sister of writer

Gore Vidal Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (; born Eugene Louis Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, erudition, and patrician manner. Vidal was bisexual, and in his novels and ...

and a stepsister of

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Jacqueline Lee Kennedy Onassis ( ; July 28, 1929 – May 19, 1994) was an American socialite, writer, photographer, and book editor who served as first lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963, as the wife of President John F. Kennedy. A pop ...

. In 1974, his parents divorced and later that same year, his mother married her second husband,

Michael Straight Michael Whitney Straight (September 1, 1916 – January 4, 2004) was an American magazine publisher, novelist, patron of the arts, a member of the prominent Whitney family, and a confessed spy for the KGB. Early life Straight was born in New Yor ...

. The wedding was attended by

, Janet Auchincloss,

Jackie Kennedy Jacqueline Lee Kennedy Onassis ( ; July 28, 1929 – May 19, 1994) was an American socialite, writer, photographer, and book editor who served as first lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963, as the wife of President John F. Kennedy. A pop ...

Renata Adler Renata Adler (born October 19, 1938) is an American author, journalist, and film critic. Adler was a staff writer-reporter for ''The New Yorker'', and in 1968–69, she served as chief film critic for ''The New York Times''. She is also a write ...

Beatrice Straight Beatrice Whitney Straight (August 2, 1914 – April 7, 2001) was an American theatre, film and television actress and a member of the prominent Whitney family. She was an Academy Award and Tony Award winner as well as an Emmy Award nominee. ...

, and

Peter Cookson Peter Cookson (May 8, 1913 – January 6, 1990) was an American stage and film actor of the 1940s and 1950s. He was known for his collaborations with his wife, Beatrice Straight, an actress and member of the Whitney family. Early life Cookso ...

Art

In 1989, Steers received a

Pollock-Krasner Foundation The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established in 1985 for the purpose of providing financial assistance to individual working artists of established ability. It was established at the bequest of Lee Krasner, who was an American abstract expression ...

Fellowship and had his first solo exhibition. He went on to exhibit his work in over 30 shows across the United States and

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

. Steers' work, primarily

figurative painting Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork (particularly paintings and sculptures) that is clearly derived from real object sources and so is, by definition, representational. The term is often in contrast to abstract ...

, is featured in the

, the

, and the

. He painted in a style that mixed dreamlike allegory with

Expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

-tinged realism and incorporated art history references. In the 1990s, his work increasingly dealt with

and many of his paintings showed male figures alone nearly nude or clothed in women's attire. Steers also depicted pairs of men bathing, dressing each other, and embracing. In his final works, he painted a self-portrait of a man dressed in a white hospital gown with white high heels. The figure is shown entering the lives of other characters as both an avenging and a guardian angel. A comprehensive

monographic A monograph is a specialist work of writing (in contrast to reference works) or exhibition on a single subject or an aspect of a subject, often by a single author or artist, and usually on a scholarly subject. In library cataloging, ''monograp ...

catalogue of Steers’ work was published by Visual AIDS in 2015.

Personal life

Steers was openly gay and died of

related complications in 1995 at the age of 32.

Exhibitions

*Drawing Center, New York (1987) * Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY (1988) *

Denver, Colorado Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

(1991) *Midtown Galleries, New York (1992) *Richard Anderson, New York (1992) *New Museum of Contemporary Art (1994) *''Cadmus, Steers, Warhol'' (2012) *

Art Basel Miami Beach Art Basel is a for-profit, privately owned and managed, international art fair staged annually in Basel, Switzerland; Miami Beach; Hong Kong and from 2022, Paris. Art Basel works in collaboration with the host city's local institutions to help ...

(2012) *Art Kabinett

''History, Painting'' (2012) *''Hugh Steers'', Alexander Gray Associates (2013) *Hugh Steers,

(2013) *Art AIDS America,

Tacoma Art Museum The Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) is an art museum in Tacoma, Washington, United States. It focuses primarily on the art and artists from the Pacific Northwest and broader western region of the U.S. Founded in 1935, the museum has strong roots in the c ...

(2015) *Hugh Steers' ''Day Light'' Alexander Gray Associates (2015) *Hugh Steers' ''Strange State of Being'' Alexander Gray Associates (2021)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Steers, Hugh Auchincloss 1962 births 1995 deaths Painters from New York City Artists from Washington, D.C. Yale University alumni 20th-century American painters American male painters AIDS-related deaths in New York (state) Gay artists LGBT artists from the United States Auchincloss family Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture alumni

Early life

Art

Personal life

Exhibitions

See also

References