Peter Saul (American, b.1934), is a painter and printmaker celebrated for his satirical commentaries on political, social, and historical events in American history. Born in San Francisco, Saul attended the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco and received a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis. Saul began his career during the height of the Abstract Expressionist movement. While he appreciated the aesthetic of this painterly style, he did not share a belief in the existentialist themes that supported the work. Instead, the artist created his own unique rhetoric, painting humorous figures using bright colors, controversial subject matter, and animated, often grotesque forms that grabbed the viewer’s attention. His commentaries on American culture contributed to the formation of proto-Pop, a predecessor to the Pop movement that would later dominate the art scene in the 1950s and 1960s. From 1956 to 1964, Saul lived throughout Europe, an experience that influenced his development as an artist. In Paris, Saul met the Surrealist painter Roberto Matta (Chilean, 1911-2002), who would influence his own Surrealist aesthetic. He was also introduced to the American art dealer Allan Frumkin, who would go on to represent the artist for more than 30 years. The breadth of subject matter in Saul’s work has ranged from scenes of World War II and the Vietnam War, to commentaries on the Civil Rights and Feminist movements, to depictions of the artist himself attacked by the forces of the world around him. One of his most famous series, Vietnam (1966), embodies the chaos and deformities that typify his Figurative scenes, giving the viewer a sense of the disdain he felt for the war in Southeast Asia. Throughout his long career, Saul has been most admired for his ability to adapt to the ever-changing tastes of the art world, without losing site of his fearlessly unique aesthetic. He has exhibited internationally and throughout the United States. A retrospective of his work in 2008 traveled to the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans.
