# Pat Steir artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/pat-steir/
Profile generated: 2026-08-24T13:40:07.509Z
Quality: medium confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Nationality: American
- Movements: Conceptual art, Minimalism
- Common media: Painting, Printmaking, Site-specific wall drawing and installation

## Portrait

![Pat Steir](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/Pat_Steir.JPG/1280px-Pat_Steir.JPG)
Jeffrey Beall · CC BY 3.0
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pat_Steir.JPG

## About Pat Steir

Pat Steir was an American painter, printmaker, and installation artist whose work developed in conversation with Conceptual art and Minimalism. She became particularly associated with abstract paintings made through poured, dripped, and splashed pigment. Her Waterfall paintings, begun in the 1980s, use gravity and the physical behavior of paint as active parts of the image-making process. Steir also produced a substantial body of graphic work, including prints documented in institutional catalogues, and later created site-specific wall drawings and installations. Collectors may therefore encounter her name across several materially different formats: unique paintings, editioned prints, works on paper, and projects conceived for architectural settings. Museum and library authority records consistently identify her as an American artist and connect her with painting and printmaking, although the collected authorities disagree about whether she was born in 1938 or 1940. That discrepancy should remain visible rather than being treated as settled.

## Common works and media

Works encountered in collection and appraisal contexts include abstract paintings, especially poured, dripped, or splashed compositions associated with the Waterfall paintings; prints and other graphic works; works on paper; and site-specific wall drawings or installations. Paintings and editioned prints should be treated as distinct categories when researching comparable records.

## Market and appraisal context

Appraisal begins by identifying whether a Pat Steir work is a unique painting, a print or other graphic work, or documentation connected with a site-specific project. Medium, dimensions, date, inscription, and the work's relationship to the Waterfall paintings or later wall-drawing practice can shape which public auction records are meaningfully comparable. For prints, the specific image, edition size, impression number, printer or publisher information, and physical condition should be documented before selecting comparables. Provenance and exhibition or publication history may also require independent verification. The supplied source pack confirms a substantial auction-record presence on Appraisily but does not include lot-level results, so no price direction or market trend can responsibly be inferred here.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine public artist-identity research with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. Identity conflicts and gaps are retained so that unsupported certainty does not enter the appraisal process.

## Sources

- Tate: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/pat-steir-1993
- The Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/artists/5637
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/112003673/
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500025304
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7144042
- IdRef: https://www.idref.fr/129588059
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Steir
- Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Steir
- Appraisily: https://appraisily.com/artist/pat-steir/
