Renée Miller

Hollis Taggart is pleased to present an exhibition of works by Renée Miller (1929-2025), a painter and sculptor known for her experimental approach to color and form. Miller was a key figure in Greenwich Village’s post-war avant-garde, exhibiting her works at both the Reuben Gallery and Martha Jackson Gallery. On view from February 26 through April 4, 2026, Renée Miller: The Devil's Snare will focus on the artist’s works from the 1950s and 60s, including a few examples of her “Extension Paintings.” Among Miller’s most innovative works, these paintings break free from the traditional frame of a canvas, with the artist’s signature bold colors and explosive brushwork bursting out of unconventionally-shaped canvases. The exhibition will also feature photographs, exhibition programs, and other archival materials that highlight Miller’s role in the post-war avant-garde scene in New York City. Renée Miller: The Devil's Snare is the artist’s first solo show in over 10 years.

Miller was born in Brooklyn in 1929, and studied art at various institutions including the New York School of Painting & Sculpture, the Hans Hoffman School of Fine Arts, and the Brooklyn Museum Art School, among others. In the 1950s, she became an important member of the Reuben Gallery, an informal gallery space that played a formative role in the development of New York City’s avant-garde cultural scene. Among others, the gallery hosted Allan Kaprow’s first public “Happening,” Jim Dine’s first solo show, and exhibitions by Claes Oldenburg, Red Grooms, and Renée Miller. The title of Hollis Taggart’s exhibition Renée Miller: The Devil's Snare, is taken from the artist’s statement for her first solo show at Reuben Gallery in 1960, in which she wrote ““Of all the devil’s snares to damn the souls of painters, the most deadly is concern with theories and results. It seems to me that the exultation of not caring about the outcome is an essential of the truly free spirit, being compelled only by an intense emotional response and the desire to explore.”

Miller’s free spirit and desire to explore is evidenced throughout her works from the 1950s and 60s, on view here and including three works that were on view in her 1960 solo at Reuben Gallery. The artist’s bold brushwork and uninhibited use of color result in a vibrant dynamism that makes her paintings appear almost like a fireworks display. This is especially true of the “Extension Paintings,” in which Miller’s use of unusually-shaped canvases and impasto technique create three-dimensional, tactile surfaces that feel as though they might expand into the room. This sentiment is captured further in the artist statement from her Reuben Gallery solo, in which the artist writes, “This conviction, belief in oneself […] It is a fire-eater that cracks your being apart, breathing energy into the work – making the painting a wild battlefield existing on a multitude of levels, unlimited in its potential.” While the works at times seem exuberant, the bold colors belie a darkness revealed in their titles – such as After the Bomb is Over (1958) – or in details such as the word “HELP” emerging from the brushwork in one painting or the suggestion of a face in agony in another.

Miller’s work received significant institutional attention in her lifetime, including being featured in the exhibition “New Forms, New Media I” at the Martha Jackson Gallery in 1960 and “Eleven from the Reuben Gallery” at the Guggenheim Museum in 1965. In 2017, it was featured in “Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952-1965”, a retrospective at the Grey Art Gallery at NYU.

“One of our main goals as a gallery has always been to display and study the work of American artists who deserve more recognition. While Renée Miller was a key figure in New York’s post-war avant-garde, she has not received as much attention as many of her counterparts,” said Hollis Taggart. “We are eager to share her work with wider audiences and thereby hopefully inspire more scholarship about her innovative contributions to the history of American art.”

For more information about The Devil's Snare, please contact us at info@hollistaggart.com or +1 212.628.4000.

For press inquiries, please contact Aga Sablinska at aga.sablinska@gmail.com or +1 862.216.6485.