Stella Snead, 96, Painter and Photographer
Hyfler/Rosner
NY Times
Ken Johnson
Stella Snead, 96, Painter and Photographer, Is Dead
Her work:
http://www.archipelago.org/vol3-1/gallery.htm
http://www.archipelago.org/vol3-1/zoubok.htm
http://www.archipelago.org/vol3-1/sulkylion.htm
Stella Snead, a British Surrealist painter and collage
artist who fled wartime Europe to work in the United States
and later became a photographer noted for her books on
India, died on March 18 in New York. She was 96.
Her dealer, Pavel Zoubok, said she died of natural causes at
the Jewish Home and Hospital in Manhattan.
Ms. Snead's paintings of the 1940's - nocturnal, dreamlike
landscapes populated by fantastic animals and semi-human
creatures - reflected the influences of painters like Yves
Tanguy and Max Ernst. Though not well remembered as a
painter today, Ms. Snead exhibited her work frequently in
the United States and Europe during that decade. In 1949,
her work was included in the prestigious Carnegie
International exhibition in Pittsburgh.
But in the 1950's, she abruptly stopped painting. The reason
was depression, she later wrote in a reminiscence. She had
suffered bouts of it before, she wrote, and now the breakup
of a romantic relationship had set off another episode,
draining her of her desire to paint. So she turned to
photography.
In India, where she began making extended visits and where
she lived throughout the 1960's, she took photographs of
street life, nature and Hindu sculpture. She published eight
books of photography, including "Shiva's Pigeons: An
Experience of India" (Alfred A. Knopf, 1972) and "Animals in
Four Worlds: Sculptures from India" (University of Chicago
Press, 1989).
Stella Snead was born on April 2, 1910, in London. It was
not until she was in her mid-20's that she decided to become
a painter. She studied with the French abstract painter
Amédée Ozenfant, who had opened an art school in London in
1936. The English Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington was
a fellow student and a close friend.
In 1939, with the outbreak of war against Germany, Ms. Snead
moved to the United States. She lived mainly in New York
City and Taos, N.M., for the next decade. After returning
from India in 1971, she resided permanently in Manhattan.
She had no immediate survivors.
In the 60's and 70's, Ms. Snead produced collages from
cut-up pieces of her own photographs. Some were published in
a book, "Can Drowning Be Fun? A Nonsense Book" (Pont la Vue
Press, 1992). And in the late 80's, after a hiatus of more
than three decades, she began painting again, making copies
from photographs of old paintings that had been lost or
stolen.
Recognition also returned to her in her later years. Last
year, one of her paintings from the 1940's was included in
"Surrealism USA," a major survey of American Surrealists at
the National Academy Museum in New York.