Peter Saul: Radical Figure

During April and May the George Adams Gallery presents PETER SAUL: RADICAL FIGURE, an exhibition featuring 20 paintings and drawings from the 1960s and 1970s.

Peter Saul: Radical Figure traces Saul’s career from his involvement with Pop-Art in the early 1960s to his tackling of contemporary political subjects in the later 1960s and “art about art” in the 1970s. While his Pop and political works were intentionally provocative, even this last series could be surprisingly controversial: In 1988 the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s acquisition committee was horrified by Saul’s 10-foot long version of Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware” (they acquired his “View of San Francisco #2,” 1986, instead).

Notable in the exhibition are a number of paintings never before or only rarely exhibited: “Gun Moll” and “Valda Sherman” both from 1961, “Girl #2,” 1962, (paired in the exhibition with “Girl #1” from the same year), and “California Artist,” 1973, (a portrait of William T. Wiley featured in Saul’s exhibition at Allan Frumkin Gallery, Chicago, that same year). Seldom or never exhibited works on paper include “Toobs,” 1963, “New China #1,” 1965, “Tuff Sister,” 1970, and studies for “Picasso’s Guernica,” 1976, “Nightwatch,” 1977, and “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” 1978.

Peter Saul has been the subject of four comprehensive museum retrospective exhibitions in the United States and abroad. He has exhibited regularly with this gallery since 1960, as well as with other galleries in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Paris, and Geneva. His work is in numerous museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and Moderna Museet, Stockholm.


Exhibition Checklist

Main Gallery

1.
California Artist, 1973
acrylic on canvas
72 x 60 inches
PSp 130

2.
New China #1, 1965
colored pencils on paper
40x 48"
PSd 34

3.
Girl #1, 1962
oil on canvas
63 x 47 1/4 inches
PSp 106

4.
Girl #2, 1962
oil on canvas
63 x 47 inches
PSp 63

5.
Suburban Houses I, 1969
colored pencil, marker, gouache on museum board
39 1/2 x 45 1/2 inches
PSd 135

6.
Ice Box (Yogurt), 1960
Crayon, ink wash, collage on paper
21 ¼ x 29 ½ inches
PSd 206

7.
Gun Moll, 1961
oil on canvas
55 x 43 inches
PSp 131

8.
Untitled (Queer Way to Die), 1963
pastel, crayon on paper
27 1/2 x 33 1/4 inches
PSd 209

9.
Untitled, 1960
crayon, pencil on paper
9 3/4 x 12 1/2 inches
PSd 207

10.
Untitled (Barbara Rose), c. 1963
ink on paper
8 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches
PSd 112

11.
Untitled (Mad), 1962
ink, collage on paper
27 1/2 x 33 ¼ inches
PSd 210

12.
Valda Sherman, 1961
oil on canvas
51 x 59 inches
PSp 09

East Window:
13.
Toobs, 1963
crayon, marker on paper
27 1/2 x 24 1/2 inches
PSd 99

West Window:
14.
Donald Duck on a Toilet Descending a Soft Watch, 1978
acrylic on museum board
40 1/8 x 30 inches
PSd 40

Drawing Gallery

15.
Lake Tahoe, c.1966
colored pencil, marker, gouache on museum board
30 x 40 inches
PSd 134

16.
Wite Arrt (Reagan), c. 1969
acrylic, ink on paper
41 x 40 inches
PSd 120

17.
The Nightwatch, 1977
acrylic on paper
23 x 29 inches
PSd 69

18.
Study for Picasso's ‘Guernica,’ 1976
acrylic, graphite and ink on board
20 x 44 inches
PSd 211

19.
Study for 'Washington Crossing the Delaware', 1978
acrylic on board
30 x 40 inches
PSd 212

20.
Tuff Sistur, 1970
gouache, colored pencils
43 3/8 x 32 5/16 inches
PSd 15