Stella Snead

Stella Snead (April 2, 1910 – March 18, 2006) was a surrealist painter, photographer, and collage artist born in London, England, who moved to the United States in 1939 to flee World War II.

Snead was born in London, England on April 2, 1910 to Ethel May Snead and Clarence Fredrick Heron Snead.

In her autobiography, Snead claims that her parents' relationship was troubled due to what she deemed “dark moods” exhibited by her father.

Such moods were a contributing factor in Stella and Ethel May’s exodus from the family home in 1915.

Snead's parents decided Stella would be a life-vegetarian and not properly vaccinated in order not to "contaminate" her blood.

Her father began to resent her mother's love, time, and attention she had for her as a child.

Her father's meanness towards her mother increased.

Her father named Stella Snead Magdalene and registered her as such, but her mother's choice was Stella, which she adopted later on, while Magdalene was used as her middle name.

Snead attended a variety of small village schools in England as a child, before attending a progressive theosophical school, St. Christopher’s, Letchworth.

She then took a secretarial course, but never truly employed its benefits, as depressive tendencies kept her from holding a daily work schedule.

In 1928, Snead moved from Leicester to Sutton, Surrey.

In 1936, Snead enrolled at the Amédée Ozenfant's academy, Ozenfant Academy of Fine Arts in London.

In 1936, Snead joined her only artists friend on the Spanish island of Teneriffe where they painted flowers in a private garden.

For the rest of the summer, Snead painted in her bedroom, to her mother's disturbance since she was not exercising and isolating herself from friends.

Out of work due to mental illness, Snead’s mother supported her until she became transfixed by the notion of painting in her early twenties.

Snead originally became interested in painting after a trip to the Spanish island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands.

The friend she traveled with painted in the gardens, and after watching her, Snead was inspired to make her own paintings.

After three years of independent study, Snead became a student at the Ozenfant Academy of Fine Art in London, England.

She studied there under the renowned French abstract artist Amédée Ozenfant and alongside fellow student and friend Leonora Carrington.

In 1939, Snead immigrated to the United States where she met many other surrealist émigrés.

After Ozenfant moved to New York to open up the Ozenfant School of Fine Arts in New York, Snead moved to New York in 1939, studying under him until 1941.

The declaration of World War II in Europe spurred Snead’s move from London, England to the United States.

In 1939, Snead arrived in New York, but remained only briefly, preferring to travel around the country, often hitching a ride on mail trucks.

She lived for several years in Taos, New Mexico.

In 1940, Snead traveled by bus to Los Angeles where she was inspired by the landscape and indigenous cultures of the American West and Southwest.

Snead had a solo show in 1941 at Gallery 10 in New York, and shows at Bonestall Gallery in 1945, the Arcade Gallery in London (1945), and at E.L.T. Mesens's London Gallery (1950).

One of her better known paintings is Ecstatic Cow (1943).

Snead moved to Taos, New Mexico in 1946 where she lived in an adobe structure.

There, she observed American Native processions and dances.

Stella Snead's paintings show her fascination with the "earth's most powerful phenomena, including tornadoes, geysers, and volcanoes," revealed by her "paintings of animals and humans performing ritualistic movements in anthropomorphic landscapes."

In 1949, her work was shown at the Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh.

Snead moved to India in the 1950s where she began working as a photographer.

These were based on various extended trips to India in the 1960s, where she shot imagery of Hindu sculpture, Indian nature and street life in India’s urban centers.

Snead spent most of her adult life moving between New York City, London, Taos, New Mexico, and India.

In 1971, she settled on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, remaining there until her death.

Snead is noted for the eight books of photography she published, including Shiva's Pigeons: An Experience of India (1972), Beach Patterns: The World of Sea and Sand (1975), and Animals in Four Worlds: Sculptures from India (1989).

"Wider recognition returned to Snead in 2005, when her work was included in Surrealism USA, a major exhibition of American Surrealism at the National Academy Museum in New York, followed by subsequent exhibitions at the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and several important gallery exhibitions of Surrealism."

Snead died on March 18, 2006, at the Jewish Home and Hospital in Manhattan, New York.

According to Snead’s art dealer Pavel Zoubok, Snead died of natural causes.

She left no immediate survivors upon her death.