Juanita McNeely

This exhibition celebrates the career of prominent American feminist artist Juanita McNeely (1936–2023), who was born in St. Louis and studied at the School of Fine Arts at Washington University in the late 1950s. McNeely’s lush, colorful paintings are grounded in her private experiences of pain, sacrifice, and desire. Her work can be viewed in conversation with that of Max Beckmann, whose pictures she knew well at the Saint Louis Art Museum. 

McNeely’s work focuses on the female body, which she represented in twisted, contorted forms that suggest suffering, pleasure, and vulnerability. Her treatment of the body is profoundly autobiographical and informed by her personal medical history. As a student at Washington University, she was diagnosed with cancer. As a young woman, she underwent an abortion.  A fall in the early 1980s fractured her spine, and she spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair. From these intense trials, she crafted a work in which she used, in her words, “beautiful color” to make “painful images . . . more ‘seductive.’ ”  

While focusing on her body paintings, this exhibition also explores McNeely’s accomplishments in landscape, portraiture, animal imagery, and still life. It includes paintings, drawings, and ceramics across 60 years from 1959 to 2019.  

Juanita McNeely is a collaboration with Counterpublic. Together with a presentation at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, this is McNeely’s first solo exhibition in her hometown. 

Juanita McNeely is co-curated by Raphael Fonseca, Counterpublic 2026 co-curator, and Simon Kelly, SLAM’s curator of modern and contemporary art.