Peter Saul San Francisco, CA, USA, b. 1934
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© Gary Tatintsian Gallery -
“I always do things the wrong way, which is completely empty Territory.”
– Peter Saul
Lives and works in New York, NY, USA
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Peter Saul is widely regarded as one of the most influential and distinctive American painters of the postwar era. Combining the expressive intensity of Pop Art with the wit of underground comics and the critical insight of social satire, Saul developed a distinctly personal style that has consistently defied categorization.
Often described as a “violator of good taste,” Saul’s paintings merge vivid color, cartoon imagery, and expressive distortion into charged compositions that reflect the contradictions of contemporary society. His pioneering role in the emergence of Bad Painting—a term associated with deliberately anti-academic, expressive figuration—established him as a central figure in contemporary painting and a touchstone for later artists including Sue Williams, Kara Walker, Robert Melee, and Carroll Dunham.
Over a career spanning more than seven decades, Saul has maintained a dialogue between mass culture and the history of art. In the 1950s, he began incorporating comic and cartoon figures such as Superman and Donald Duck into expressionist compositions, confronting high art with popular iconography. In the 1960s, he produced paintings that served as fierce indictments of war and political authority, responding to the Vietnam conflict. During the 1970s, he reinterpreted canonical works—among them Rembrandt’s The Night Watch and Picasso’s Guernica—recasting them through his own acerbic lens. Throughout his practice, Saul has balanced parody with critique, transforming humor, excess, and contradiction into vehicles for reflection on both image and ideology.Beneath their apparent irreverence, Saul’s paintings reveal a sustained engagement with the history of modern art. His mastery of composition, color, and structure enables him to construct layered dialogues between cultural commentary, formal exploration, and autobiographical reference. Through this synthesis, Saul has articulated a distinctive and provocative vision that invites viewers to reconsider social values and confront the psychology of contemporary experience.
“THE IMPORTANT THING IS THAT A WORK HAS TO LOOK FRESH, TO BE AS ORIGINAL AS POSSIBLE. THAT MEANS IT HAS TO HAVE ITS OWN IDEA AND PSYCHOLOGY. I TRY TO MAKE IT WORTH LOOKING AT, TO TURN IT INTO A SENSATION. TRUE OR FALSE DOESN’T MATTER AT ALL AS LONG AS IT’S DISTURBING OR FUNNY, BECAUSE I LOVE ALL PSYCHOLOGY. BAD THINGS MAKE ME LAUGH JUST AS OFTEN AS GOOD THINGS. THIS HAS BEEN MY ART STYLE FOR OVER 55 YEARS. I AM OPEN TO ANY HUMOR, EXCEPT SOPHISTICATED HUMOR. TOO MANY GOOD ARTISTS HAVE SOUGHT AFTER IT. THE SECRET OF THE SUCCESS OF A “BAD” ARTIST IS IN OVERCOMING THE NEED FOR APPROVAL.”
– PETER SAUL
In 2020, the New Museum in New York presented a major retrospective, Peter Saul: Crime and Punishment, curated by Massimiliano Gioni and Gary Carrion-Murayari, celebrating the artist’s groundbreaking contributions to contemporary art.
Works by Peter Saul are held in major international collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles; and the Art Institute of Chicago. -
Works
Peter Saul San Francisco, CA, USA, b. 1934
Self-Defense, 1969Acrylic on canvas68 x 96 in
172,7 x 243,8 cmFurther images
“I wanted my art…not to be in the middle. My feeling about politics in art is that it’s usually feeble, because it delivers the expected message. The expected message is...“I wanted my art…not to be in the middle. My feeling about politics in art is that it’s usually feeble, because it delivers the expected message. The expected message is dead on arrival, because all it does is point out that the good guys are good, the bad guys are bad. I wanted work that was far, far more troubling. If a picture isn’t troubling, why even think about it?” – Peter Saul
Self-Defense is a groundbreaking painting in which Peter Saul challenged sixties America to consider its rising social tensions. Created in 1969, during the height of the Black Panther movement, it stands as one of the key works in Saul’s series of politically charged paintings from that era, highlighting the civil rights struggles and societal conflicts of the time.
Saul’s approach to art often includes elements of humor and satire, even when addressing serious social issues. Self-Defense depicts academic and activist Angela Davis, who was persecuted by the U.S. government for her involvement with the Black Panthers, defending herself against a pair of police officers whose distended forms reach across a caricatured version of the Golden Gate Bridge. This artwork reflected Saul’s position at the forefront of the counterculture and his engagement with pressing questions of race and inequality.
Combining hyperchromatic Day-Glo colors and caricatures of American culture, Saul employed his signature style to push the boundaries of what painting can achieve. The work went beyond what other pop-art artists dared to explore, making a bold statement through its vivid and provocative imagery.
Exhibitions
'Peter Saul: New Paintings'. Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York. November, 1969;
'Peter Saul: Retrospective,' Swen Parsons Gallery, DeKalb, Northern Illinois University, November 3–30, 1980; traveled to Madison, Madison Art Center, February 1–March 29, 1981;
'Peter Saul: Political Paintings: 1965-1971,' Frumkin/Adams Gallery, New York. October 1–November 30, 1990;
'Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk,' Venus Over Manhattan, New York. February 25–April 25, 2015;
'Peter Saul: Crime and Punishment', New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. curated by Massimiliano Gioni and Gary Carrion-Murayari, February 11, 2020–January 3, 2021.
'Peter Saul: San Francisco'. Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco. January 13–February 26, 2022
Publications
"Continuing Solos," New York Magazine 2, no. 47 (November 24, 1969), ill., p. 28.
Kind, Joshua, Dennis Adrian, Peter Saul, Peter Saul (DeKalb: Swen Parson Gallery, 1980), ill., p. 20.
Cameron, Dan, "Peter Saul: Political Paintings", 1965-1971 (New York: Frumkin/Adams Gallery, 1990), ill., p. 12.
Cameron, Dan, Dennis Szakacs, Robert Storr, Peter Saul, and Michael Duncan, Peter Saul (Newport Beach: Orange County Museum of Art, 2008), ill., p. 24.
Bradley, Paige K., "Critics' Picks: Peter Saul: Venus Over Manhattan," Artforum, April 10, 2015, ill.
Callahan, Sophia, "Peter Saul is Older (and Cooler) Than Your Favorite Artist," VICE, April 20, 2015, ill.
"Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk." Culture Feeder (March 19, 2015), ill.
Frank, Priscilla, "Meet Peter Saul, The Art World's Resident Octogenarian Rebel," HuffPost, February 17, 2015, ill. "Peter Saul: From Pop to Punk" (New York: Venus Over Manhattan, 2015), ill., pp. 86-87.Laster, Paul, "From Pop to Punk: Peter Saul" Time Out New York, March 26, 2015, ill.
Piepenbring, Dan, "Pictures with Problems," The Paris Review, March 31, 2015, ill.
Yau, John, "Peter Saul's Hair-Raising Attacks," Hyperallergic, March 29, 2015, ill.
Abrams, Loney, "Peter Saul's Painting Survey Asserts a Nuanced Take on Protest and Complicity at the New Museum," NAD NOW: The Journal of the National Academy of Design, March 11, 2020.
Gioni, Massimiliano, Gary Carrion-Murayari, "Peter Saul: Crime and Punishment" (New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art; New York: Phaidon, 2020), ill., pp. 121, 124-125.
Nadel, Dan, ed., "Peter Saul: Professional Artist Correspondence, 1945-1976" (New York: Bad Dimensions Press, 2020), ill., p. 175 Zutshi, Vikram. "Meet Peter Saul, the Bad Boy of American Art," Pop Matters, April 28, 2020, ill.
Exhibitions-
Naturally Naked
Group Exhibition 15 Aug - 28 Dec 2019Read more > -
Peter Saul. You Better Call Saul
Personal Exhibition 22 Apr - 27 Sep 2016Read more > -
Mutated Reality
Group Exhibition 27 Nov 2015 - 2 Mar 2016Read more > -
Dubai Design District: The Inaugural Exhibition
Group Exhibition, DubaiTatintsian Gallery announces the opening of its new space in Dubai Design District (d3), expanding its international program into the region.Read more >
Dedicated to internationally recognized contemporary artists, the gallery offers direct access to works held in leading museum collections worldwide and continues its longstanding engagement in building some of the most significant private collections.
We look forward to welcoming you in d3.
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