Peter Saul

"I prefer the end of the world mood"

In the course of the 1960s, painting also fell into the loop of permanent recourse and constant transformation, which - in contrast to the progress hypothesis - is regarded as the working basis of postmodernism. Peter Saul (*1934 in San Francisco) is one of the most important protagonists of this upheaval, which is often mistakenly associated exclusively with the emergence of Pop Art. With his paintings and drawings, Peter Saul created a complex amalgam of high culture and counterculture, combining comics, pop, surrealism and abstract expressionism with the radical (and sometimes trivial) social criticism of the hash rebels. Of course, such a painter was never an advocate of the American troop deployment in Vietnam, never a partisan of Reagan or Bush, but to reduce his work politically to agit-prop would be to overlook the hedonistic impulse of an occasionally baroque joy of composition in his pictures. Following publications on his work in recent years in the USA, the first solo exhibition in Europe conceived by Martina Weinhart and the Schirn, together with the catalogue, now focuses in particular on the work of the 1960s, when sex and crime, politics, drugs, karma and revolt were just beginning to penetrate the world in oil. Connoisseurs are reminded of Philip Guston, the other great US painter of late fame, by the pastel-coloured palette of some of Saul's works. When asked about this, Peter Saul simply said: "I was never interested in Guston's paintings, they are too 'softcore' for my taste. His attitude towards the subject is too cheerful for me. I prefer the doomsday mood. I like to laugh at bad news."

Exhibitions:
Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2 June - 3 September 2017
Deichtorhallen Hamburg/Falckenberg Collection, 30 September 2017 - 28 January 2018