MAY STEVENS
WHEN THE WATERS BREAK
FEBRUARY 20 – APRIL 12, 2025
Portrait of May Stevens c. 2003, in front of Oxbow, Napa River, Napa, CA (2002). This painting is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
WHEN THE WATERS BREAK
Rooted in her enduring connection to rivers and oceans, the five paintings and eleven works on paper in When the Waters Break depict bodies of water — both real and imagined — that were important to May Stevens (1924–2019) throughout her life. Stevens used a wide array of colors, depicting the swirling and rippling movement of water in blues, greens, grays, and purples and adding text in eye-catching gold and silver to approximate the reflection of light on water. The paintings extend to the edges of their unstretched canvas, which Stevens felt gave the work an expansive openness to envelop the viewer into the painting. These works are undeniably beautiful.
But they are not just beautiful. Stevens often imbued the surface of the water with words, drawing inspiration from writing about women, family, and nature. Her source texts were mostly written by women (including passages from Virginia Woolf and feminist scholar Julia Kristeva). Stevens said, “I want not to be afraid to be beautiful — and not to value intellect or wisdom over beauty. I want them both. I refuse to choose between them. I’ve always wanted them both. No politics without poetry. No poetry without politics.”1
The title of this exhibition, When the Waters Break, comes from a 2006 lecture Stevens gave at Rutgers University that focused on the creative process, describing the struggle of an artist as she works and then the sudden realization that the artwork is complete. Stevens explained, “You realize that this has been a dialogue between you and the living organism that is a work of art. It is beyond you, outside of you. You are its handmaiden, its doula.”
Ruminating on the introspective power of words, these works combine the impact of water and writing as a way to harness and process her grief following the death of
White Only, 1963
Gouache on paper
48 1/2 x 18 1/8 inches (123.2 x 46 cm)
Private collection
her husband, artist Rudolf Baranik (1920–1998), and son, Steven Baranik (1948–1981), as well as celebrating the beauty and fullness of life. Stevens scattered the ashes of her family members in bodies of water: water was her connection to both life and death, joy and grief.
Rivers and oceans were important to Stevens throughout her life. She spent formative childhood years swimming in the Fore River, a tidal estuary in Quincy, Massachusetts, and often fondly recalled the saltiness of the water and the warmth of the sun. While the waters of the Fore River were a place of youthful innocence for Stevens, they were also a site of industrial production. Around the corner from where she would swim and play with her friends was the Bethlehem Steel Shipyard, which produced warships and commercial ships. Her father, Ralph Stevens, worked there as a pipefitter.
A keenly political artist, her roots in the salty river of her childhood marked her life as one deeply entwined with the interests of the working class. In 1963, Stevens exhibited her first major series, Freedom Riders, in her first solo exhibition at Roko Gallery in New York City. The series was Stevens’s outraged response to the increasingly violent racism facing African Americans living in the American South. Stevens used text in these works as a way to confront and implicate the viewer, notably in the painting White Only (1963). Art historian Patricia Hills wrote, “She scrawled the block letters ‘White Only,’ in reverse … which announce to the black man that he cannot enter into the space inhabited by the artist and by us, the viewers.”2
78 x 120 inches (198.1 x 304.8 cm)
But That Was In Another Country, 1990
84 x 135 inches (213.4 x 342.9 cm)
In the 1980s, Stevens embarked on the series Ordinary/ Extraordinary, juxtaposing her housewife mother, Alice Stevens,
Fore River, 1983
Acrylic on canvas
Acrylic on canvas
and the Marxist activist Rosa Luxemburg, who was murdered by German fascists and dumped into Berlin’s Landwehr canal. This series argued for the importance of both figures in history — they were both women who were simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary, and neither had gotten the respect or attention that Stevens felt they were due. Stevens’s mother would have been omitted from history but for her daughter’s insistence on inserting Alice into the historical record.
Motifs of water and text featured prominently in Ordinary/ Extraordinary. In the painting Fore River (1983), Stevens flanked the river of her childhood with two images of her mother. Both Alice and the Fore River represented Stevens’s origins, and Stevens would go on through the rest of her career to use water as a symbol of memory. Stevens reflected, “It’s all one body of water that connects my childhood, my love of water, my swimming … and then it goes into Rosa, her being thrown into the water, the canal, her death, and then it goes into the Hudson River, yes. So there’s this kind of circularity, continuity, and it’s the way I feel about life and death.” 3
But That Was In Another Country (1990) shows Luxemburg’s purple skirt swirling in the water — our last glimpse of her body before it is submerged into the water of the canal. Stevens included trompe l’oeil lettering that appears to be taped to the surface of the painting. The words are by Christopher Marlowe (the full quote is “but that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead”) and signify that a woman who is dead cannot make trouble any longer. These words resonated with Stevens as she argued, through her artwork, for the importance of women in history. Luxemburg had died for her cause, and Stevens wanted to ensure that her legacy would be remembered. Art historian Patricia Hills wrote,
Installation view of Stevens’s 1999 solo exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Go Gentle (1983) is visible on the right.
The Elaboration of Absence, 1991
Acrylic on canvas; four panels 26 x 104 inches (66 x 264.2 cm) each
“She remained preoccupied with the problem of representing Luxemburg physically gone but alive in the world of ideas and political influence.”4
Emerging directly from the Ordinary/Extraordinary works, Stevens went on to create her water series from 1990 to 2009, which consisted of eighteen paintings, twelve lithographs, and several works on paper. Many of these are in museums and private collections; five paintings and eleven works on paper are on view in this exhibition. Stevens was disturbed by Luxemburg’s brutal murder. When she began the painting Missing Persons (1990-93), she planned to depict Luxemburg in the water but was “unable” to bring herself to do so, pivoting instead to portraying women in rowboats on top of the water, making this one of the first paintings in the water series.5 Stevens had previously used an image of a rowboat in the painting
The Elaboration of Absence (1991, from the Ordinary/Extraordinary series) as a symbol of hope.6
Another early work in the water series is Sea of Words (1990-91). The dark water is interrupted by four stark white boats, each carrying a figure with oars. Both Stevens herself as well as art historian Moira Roth have suggested that these could be four different figures or they could be one figure seen moving filmically across the canvas.7
The image is based on a still from the artist Joan Braderman’s video No More Nice Girls (1989), which includes footage of Braderman’s mother in a rowboat. The writing on the water appears in multiple colors: copper, gray, brown, and white. Stevens described the writing in Missing Persons as the kind “that flowed and made movements that were continuous — like gusts of air moving in rhythm”; whereas in Sea of Words it is more “broken” and “choppy.”8 The artist’s portrayal of water was based on careful consideration of how it moves and flows under different conditions.
Sea of Words, 1990-91
Acrylic on canvas
84 x 132 inches (213.4 x 335.3 cm)
Collection of the McCormick Place Convention Center, Chicago
Installation view of Stevens’s 2005 solo exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. On view from left to right: Lagoon, Fort Cronkhite, Marin Headlands (2002); Hudson II (2000); Connemara (Rock Pool) (1999-2001, in the collection of Joslyn Art Museum).
Installation view of Stevens’s 2005 solo exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. On view from left to right: Missing Persons (1990-93); This Is Not Landscape (2004); Oxbow, Napa River, Napa, CA (2002, in the collection of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).
The rowboat motif is repeated in Her Boats (1996), where women in boats float on the surface. In this painting, the viewer is placed below the water, gazing up at the golden sunlight from the murky, mysterious depths. Stevens said, “I became annoyed with the fact that if you ever wanted to represent a human, you have to use a man. I didn’t see why that had to be the case. So these are women, but they are not specifically to be thought of as women because they are humans, people.”9
The entire water series has never been exhibited in full, but Mary Ryan Gallery and RYAN LEE Gallery have exhibited much of it over the years. Work from the water series was included in Stevens’s 1999 retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, entitled Images of Women Near and Far: 19831997, the museum’s first exhibition of its kind for a living female artist. In 2005, Stevens had an important solo exhibition, The Water Remembers: Recent Paintings by May Stevens, 1990-2005, that traveled from the Springfield Museum of Art, Missouri; to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. In 2021, critic Lucy Lippard and curator Brandee Caoba co-curated a solo exhibition, May Stevens: Mysteries, Politics, and Seas of Words, at SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In 1997, Stevens moved to arid New Mexico; perhaps her pining for the waters of the East Coast were a part of the inspiration for this body of work. Water may have also been a way to incorporate spirituality into Stevens’s work, since death is a return to nature. After Rudolf Baranik died in 1998, Stevens scattered his ashes in bodies of water that they had frequented together. She wrote, “[The ashes] fell straight to the bottom, descending in a milky cloud, then lying like a sign, a word, a
connecting mark soon to be lifted and carried out by the tide.”10 Atlantic (Coast of Maine) (2000-01) and Martha’s Vineyard, MA (2007) are both watery sites of remembrance where Stevens sought to connect with and pay tribute to her late husband.
As it flows, water always carries something with it: sediments, minerals, pollutants, living beings. Dissolved in and floating on top of the waters of these works are words, handwritten by May Stevens and inspired by writers she admired. Sometimes they are legible, at other times they are impossible to decipher, but nevertheless the stream transmits their meaning and spirit.
Stevens was a voracious reader and loved to write poetry. In the works in this exhibition, we see the full expression of Stevens’s lifelong fascination with bodies of water and the power of language. Handwritten words lend a deeper meaning to the work and are inspired by Stevens’s ardent feminism, deeply connected to women’s history and her own family history, and strongly related to her previous work. She sought to establish a place in history for herself as well as for the women that she respected. Lippard praised Stevens’s ability to “organically” fuse feminist theory with art, explaining, “She restores subjectivity and depth to the objectified and flattened woman.”11
Some of the text in these works is legible but much of it is asemic writing that cannot be deciphered, adding to the sense of mystery evoked by these paintings and works on paper. Stevens said, “These words create color, texture, movement, an articulation of the surface of the canvas, making it breathe, giving it life, light, a changing inflection; the possibility of seeing the work differently at different moments; of surprise, of finding new things in it, of more than meets the first encounter,
Installation view of Stevens’s 2021 solo exhibition at SITE Santa Fe. On view from left to right: Galisteo (Creek, NM) (2001, in the collection of the Museum of Texas Tech University); This Is Not Landscape (2004).
of suggesting depths of feeling and connection. The canvas hangs like tapestry, like cloth; the color flows like water, its paths apparent. Water is life.”12
The title of This Is Not Landscape (2004) gives us perhaps the clearest instruction on how to interpret this body of work, clarifying that they are not merely what they appear to be on the surface. Inspired by Wallace Stevens’s poem “The Irish Cliffs of Moher,” which examines the relationship between nature and one’s family history, the soft washes of color in this painting evoke a mystical, abstract space. Using drippy paint and rough brushstrokes, the artist shows us only water. There is no land depicted, other than some reflections at the top of the composition.
In 2001, Stevens received an Andy Warhol Foundation grant and spent five weeks painting at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California. During this time, she painted Lagoon, Fort Cronkhite, Marin Headlands (2002). In this composition, the sky is bright above rolling green hills. The shape of the land is reflected again in the lagoon, and the water is layered with metallic writing, evoking the movement of water in the wind. The Headlands Center occupies an old army base, which was operational during World War II, and overlooks the Rodeo Lagoon. The text in this painting includes excerpts from interviews with soldiers who were stationed there in the 1940s and 50s. A strip of material at the bottom of the canvas repeats the words again, ensuring their legibility.
Why did Stevens choose water as a conduit to explore these themes? In a 2005 lecture at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Stevens quoted Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher who
said that no one ever steps in the same river twice. Water is dynamic, always changing and never staying in the same place. Yet it is eternal: no new water is created. Rather it is reused and recycled, making it an apt metaphor for the cycle of life. Caoba makes this connection between water and history, writing, “While history is often told through the lens of dominant narratives, the truth is everyday people make history. May Stevens recognized we are all part of the historical flow, not separate from it, and our actions and roles matter. Her work questioned the governing discourse, particularly the versions of history that disappeared women’s political, social, and cultural contributions.”13
Stevens made twelve lithographs on this theme, mostly working with Tamarind Institute and Derriere L’Etoile Studios. One of the first prints in the water series was River Run (1994), which depicts rowers on the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1988-89, Stevens was a fellow at the Bunting Institute (now known as the Harvard Radcliffe Institute) and spent time near the river, which she also visited as a child with her family. In this print, Stevens uses silver writing to create the outline of the rowers, working together to propel the boat, as the water extends above and below them to the edges of the paper. Glimpses of the green and brown depths are visible between the silvery reflections.
In the lithograph Skylight (2006), seven silhouetted figures move along the shore, their bodies surrounded by water below and sky above. The background, reminiscent of the inside of a polished seashell, is depicted in nuanced shades of grayish blues, mauves, and whites. Gold metallic writing, which is not intended to be legible, unifies the composition. In Stevens’s own words, “The title refers to the gray-gold light that fills the entire
space, sky and water equally. The seven figures respond to the light: they dance, play, pirouette, experience the moment when they are totally enveloped from above, below and all around them with the wavering quavering light.”14
Among the last works Stevens created, Into the Night (2009) depicts a solitary boat drifting on the water, where atmospheric color washes blur the boundary between water and sky. Inspired by peacock feathers, deep greens and rich blues evoke a mysterious nighttime scene. The title is likely a callback to Stevens’s painting Go Gentle (1983), whose title inverted the meaning of Dylan Thomas’s poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” May advised her own mother Alice that she did not have to “rage against the dying of the light” and rather could die peacefully. Into the Night may represent Stevens’s contemplations on her own mortality as she also reflected on her mother’s aging and death. Stevens’s characteristic metallic script shimmers on the water’s surface like moonlight, accompanying the lone boat into the night as it travels away from the viewer towards parts unknown.
ENDNOTES
1. Barbara Stern Shapiro and May Stevens, May Stevens: Images of Women Near and Far, 1983-1997 (Mary Ryan Gallery, 1999), 13.
2. Patricia Hills, May Stevens (Pomegranate Communications, Inc., 2005), 69.
3. Hills, May Stevens, 62.
4. Hills, May Stevens, 79.
5. Hills, May Stevens, 52
6. Hills, May Stevens, 52.
7. Moira Roth, May Stevens: Women, Words and Water (from CU Art Galleries exhibition material, 1993).
8. Hills, May Stevens, 52.
9. Stern Shapiro and Stevens, May Stevens: Images of Women Near and Far, 1983-1997, 11.
10. Writing by May Stevens for 2001 Rivers and Other Bodies of Water exhibition at Mary Ryan Gallery.
11. Lucy R. Lippard, “In Sight, Out of Mind,” Z Magazine (May 1988), 67.
12. 2003 fax from May Stevens to Mary Ryan Gallery.
13. Brandee Caoba, “Art Makes Traps to Catch the Spirit in,” in May Stevens: Mysteries, Politics, and Seas of Words (SITE Santa Fe, 2021).
14. 2006 fax from May Stevens to Mary Ryan Gallery.
PAINTINGS
Her Boats, 1996
Acrylic on canvas
83 x 142 inches (210.8 x 360.7 cm)
Exhibition History:
2021 May Stevens: Mysteries, Politics, and Seas of Words, SITE Santa Fe, NM.
2005 The Water Remembers: Recent Paintings by May Stevens, 1990-2005, Springfield Art Museum, MO; traveled to Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; and National Museum of Women in the Arts, DC.
1999 May Stevens: Images of Women Near and Far: 1983-1997, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA.
1996 May Stevens, Mary Ryan Gallery, NY.
Installation view of Stevens’s 2021 solo exhibition at SITE Santa Fe, May Stevens: Mysteries, Politics, and Seas of Words. On view from left to right: Her Boats (1996); The Canal (1988).
Atlantic (Coast of Maine), 2000-01
58 x 83 inches (147.3 x 210.8 cm)
Exhibition History:
2001 May Stevens: Rivers and Other Bodies of Water: Recent Paintings, Drawings and Prints, Mary Ryan Gallery, NY.
Acrylic on canvas
Lagoon, Fort Cronkhite, Marin Headlands, 2002
Acrylic on canvas
84 x 130 1/2 inches (213.4 x 331.5 cm)
Exhibition History:
2005 The Water Remembers: Recent Paintings by May Stevens, 1990-2005, Springfield Art Museum, MO; traveled to Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; and National Museum of Women in the Arts, DC.
2004 Alfabeto de Aguas/Water Words: May Stevens: Recent Paintings, The University of Arizona Museum of Art, AZ.
2003 May Stevens: Deep River, Mary Ryan Gallery, NY.
Installation view of Stevens’s 2005 solo exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Water Remembers: Recent Paintings by May Stevens, 1990-2005. On view from left to right: Confluence of Two Rivers, Vilnele and Neris (2002); Her Boats (1996); Lagoon, Fort Cronkhite, Marin Headlands (2002).
This Is Not Landscape, 2004
Acrylic on canvas
84 x 78 inches (213.4 x 198.1 cm)
Exhibition History:
2021 May Stevens: Mysteries, Politics, and Seas of Words, SITE Santa Fe, NM.
2005 The Water Remembers: Recent Paintings by May Stevens, 1990-2005, Springfield Art Museum, MO; traveled to Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; and National Museum of Women in the Arts, DC.
Vineyard, MA, 2007
54 x 68 inches (137.2 x 172.7 cm)
Exhibition History:
2007 May Stevens: ashes rock snow water: New Paintings and Works on Paper, Mary Ryan Gallery, NY.
Martha’s
Acrylic on canvas
WORKS ON PAPER
On the Charles River, 1994
Mixed media on paper
22 1/4 x 30 inches (56.5 x 76.2 cm)
Boat at Rest, 2003
Acrylic on paper
30 x 22 inches (76.2 x 55.9 cm)
Sometimes the sun the moon, 2005
Mixed media on paper
17 x 22 inches (43.2 x 55.9 cm)
22 1/8 x 29 3/4 inches (56.2 x 75.6 cm)
Night Swimmers, 2006
Mixed media on paper
River Run, 2009
Acrylic on paper
22 1/8 x 29 3/4 inches (56.2 x 75.6 cm)
LITHOGRAPHS
River Run, 1994
Lithograph
22 1/8 x 29 3/4 inches (56.2 x 75.6 cm)
Edition of 20
Publisher: Tamarind Institute
Printer: Tamarind Institute
Impressions of this print can be found in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art, OH; Library of Congress, DC; University of Arizona Museum of Art, AZ; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.
Te Quiero Verde, 1994
Lithograph
22 x 30 inches (55.9 x 76.2 cm)
Edition of 20
Publisher: Tamarind Institute
Printer: Tamarind Institute
Impressions of this print can be found in the collections of Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, NY and Rosemont College, PA.
The Beach at Connemara, 1997
Lithograph
22 x 30 inches (55.9 x 76.2 cm)
Edition of 22
Publisher: Tamarind Institute
Printer: Tamarind Institute
Waiting, 1997
Lithograph 17 x 22 inches (43.2 x 55.9 cm)
Edition of 25
Publisher: Tamarind Institute
Printer: Tamarind Institute
Impressions of this print can be found in the collections of Guilford College, NC; the Hunter Museum of American Art, TN; and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, MA.
Indigo, 1998 Lithograph
22 x 30 inches (55.9 x 76.2 cm)
Edition of 18
Publisher: Mary Ryan Gallery
Printer: Tamarind Institute
An impression of this print can be found in the collection of Hunter Museum of American Art, TN.
Installation view of Stevens’s 2005 solo exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Water Remembers: Recent Paintings by May Stevens, 1990-2005.
Pearl, 1998
Lithograph
22 1/4 x 30 inches (56.5 x 76.2 cm)
Edition of 30
Publisher: Mary Ryan Gallery
Printer: Tamarind Institute
Impressions of this print can be found in the collections of the Harwood Museum of Art, NM and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA.
work, the starry waters, 1999
Lithograph
22 x 30 inches (55.9 x 76.2 cm)
Edition of 30
Publisher: Mary Ryan Gallery
Printer: Eileen Foti
Impressions of this print can be found in the collections of the Hunter Museum of American Art, TN and the Springfield Art Museum, MO.
Three Boats on a Green Green Sea, 2000
Lithograph
22 x 30 inches (55.9 x 76.2 cm)
Edition of 26
Publisher: Mary Ryan Gallery
Printer: Eileen Foti
Impressions of this print can be found in the collections of the New Mexico Museum of Art, NM and the New York Academy of Art, NY.
Green Light, 2000
Lithograph
22 x 30 inches (55.9 x 76.2 cm)
Edition of 8
Publisher: Mary Ryan Gallery
Printer: Eileen Foti
Water is a Gift, 2003
Lithograph
19 x 25 inches (48.3 x 63.5 cm)
Edition of 30
Publisher: Harwood Museum of Art
Printer: Tamarind Institute
An impression of this print can be found in the collection of the Harwood Museum of Art, NM.
Skylight, 2006
Lithograph and silkscreen
21 3/4 x 29 1/2 inches (55.2 x 74.9 cm)
Edition of 75
Publisher: Mary Ryan Gallery
Printer: Derriere L'Etoile Studios
Impressions of this print can be found in the collections of the Hunter Museum of American Art, TN; Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, AL; Massachusetts College of Art and Design, MA; and Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN.
Into the Night, 2009
Lithograph and silkscreen
18 x 23 1/8 inches (45.7 x 58.7 cm)
Edition of 75
Publisher: Mary Ryan Gallery
Printer: Derriere L'Etoile Studios
Impressions of this print can be found in the collections of the British Museum, United Kingdom; the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, MA; Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, MA; and New Mexico Museum of Art, NM.
May Stevens working on Skylight at Derriere L'Etoile Studios in New York, 2006.
Photo courtesy of Maurice Sanchez.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition MAY STEVENS: WHEN THE
February 20 - April 12, 2025
RYAN LEE Gallery
515 West 26th Street
New York NY 10011
212 397 0742
www.ryanleegallery.com
Member, Art Dealers Association of America
Essay by Isabella Vitti
Photography by Luke Austin and Mikhail Mishin
Layout design by Mikhail Mishin
Thank you to Dr. Patricia Hills and the May Stevens Rudolf Baranik Foundation.
© 2025 RYAN LEE Gallery
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2025931643
