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Peter Bradley

Peter Bradley (b. 1940, Connellsville, Pennsylvania) is a painter and sculptor whose work is associated with the Color Field movement. Staining and splattering his canvases, the artist stages vibrant encounters with color, which, in his words “supersedes subject.” Beginning in the late 1960s, Bradley used a spray gun to project acrylic thickened with gel—a medium that was newly developed at the start of his practice—onto his canvases in gestural passages and saturated layers. His recent techniques include working wet-into-wet, exposing his canvases to the elements, and embedding materials such as glass, flowers, and butterfly wings into his acrylic. Alongside his pioneering achievements in painting, Bradley has, for nearly six decades, created abstract sculptures from salvaged metals that extend his investigations of color and dynamism into the realm of three dimensions. Bradley lives in upstate New York.

Bradley curated one of the first racially integrated exhibitions in the United States. Presented in 1971 in Houston, The De Luxe Show featured work by artists including Anthony Caro, Sam Gilliam, Al Loving, and Kenneth Noland. Bradley’s work is held in the collections of the African American Museum, Dallas; African American Museum, Los Angeles; Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgewood, Connecticut; Dallas Art Museum; Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio; Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Johannesburg Art Foundation; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Menil Collection, Houston; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; Rennie Collection, Vancouver; Stamford Museum and Nature Center, Stamford, Connecticut; University of California, Berkeley; University of Sydney; and the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina, among others.

Bradley’s work is currently on view in Glory of the World: Color Field Painting (1950s through 1983) at the NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida through August 25, 2024.

Single work, Peter Bradley

Born 1940, Connellsville, Pennsylvania
Lives and works in upstate New York

EDUCATION

Yale School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut
Society of Arts and Crafts, Detroit, Michigan

SELECTED SOLO AND TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS

2022

Karma, Los Angeles, Ruling Light: Paintings from the 1970s, organized by Dieter Buchhart

2021

Karma, New York

2019

Oyster Point Gallery, Red Bank, New Jersey, Peter Bradley: Beyond the Fields of Color
Emerge Gallery, Saugerties, New York, Peter Bradley: New Work

2017

GraySpace Gallery, Santa Barbara, California, Squire Foundation residency exhibition

2003

David A. Portlock Black Cultural Center Gallery, Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, Peter Bradley: The Kingdom Has Come

2002

Cross Path Culture, New York, Peter Bradley/John Hersey

1993

Kenkeleba House, New York, Peter Bradley

1987

Gallery Hirondelle, New York, Peter Bradley 

1986

Gallery Hirondelle, New York, Peter Bradley/Suzanne McClelland

1982

Dyansen Gallery, New York, Peter Bradley

1981

Hedgeepeth & De Staycker, Brussels, Peter Bradley

1974

Cusack Gallery, Houston, Texas, Peter Bradley
André Emmerich Downtown, New York, Peter Bradley: New Paintings

1973

André Emmerich Downtown, New York, Peter Bradley

1972

André Emmerich Gallery, New York, Peter Bradley

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2023

NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Glory of the World: Color Field Painting (1950s through 1983), curated by Bonnie Clearwater

UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California, What Has Been and What Could Be: The BAMPFA Collection

2022-23

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, New Abstracts

2022

Stamford Museum & Nature Center, Stamford, Discovering Color: Two Decades of Abstraction

MORÁN MORÁN, Mexico City, A Form of Magic, curated by Benjamin Godsill

2021

Karma, New York, Get Lifted!, organized by Hilton Als

Karma, New York/Parker Gallery, Los Angeles, The De Luxe Show

2020

Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-83

2017

GraySpace Gallery, Santa Barbara, California, GraySpace Artists Group Show

2002

Jack Tilton Gallery and Anna Kustera Gallery, New York, No Greater Love: Abstraction
Cross Path Culture, New York, Paper for Paper

2001

Tribes Gallery, New York, Cross-Cultural Gems, curated by James Little

1991

Kenkeleba House, New York, The Search for Freedom: African American Abstract Painting 1945-1975

1984

Harkrader and Ross, Washington DC, Walk

1983

22 Wooster Gallery, New York, On Trial: Yale School of Art

1982

White Gallery, New York, Peter Bradley

1976

Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corp. and Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York, Selected Works by Black Artists from the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut

1973

The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1973 Biennial, Contemporary American Art

1972

Sidney Janis Gallery and Pace Gallery, New York, Art for McGovern

1971

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Toward Color and Field, curated by Elmer Arthur Carmean Jr.
De Luxe Theater, Houston, De Luxe Show, curated by Peter Bradley
Institute for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, Some American History

1969

Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Providence, Contemporary Black Artists

1968

Museum of Modern Art, New York, In Honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 30 Contemporary Black Artists

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

African American Museum of Dallas
Aldrich Museum, Ridgewood, Connecticut
Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland
California African American Museum, Los Angeles
Dallas Museum of Art
Dayton Art Institute, Ohio
Fogg Museum, Boston
Johannesburg Art Foundation, South Africa
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Menil Collection, Houston
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota
Museum of Fine Arts Boston

Museum of Fine Arts Houston

Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
The Rennie Collection, Vancouver
Stamford Museum and Nature Center, Connecticut
Studio Museum, Harlem, New York
UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, California
University of Sydney, Australia
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina

HONORS, LECTURES, AND AWARDS

2017

Squire Foundation Artist in Residence, Santa Barbara, California

2009

Harvard University, Department of Art History and Architecture, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Clement Greenberg at 100: Looking Back to Modern Art

2003

Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania

2002

Pollock Krasner Award

2001

Wheeler Foundation Grant

1994

Pollock Krasner Award

1986

University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, Emma Lake Artist Workshop

1985

Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York
United States-South Africa Leadership Exchange Program Grant

1983

Andy Warhol Foundation Exhibition Grant
National Endowment for the Arts Grant, Clayworks Studio Workshop, New York

PUBLICATIONS

2016

Darby English.
1971: A Year in the Life of Color
University of Chicago Press, Chicago
312 pages
7 x 9 inches

2010

Josef Helfenstein, Laureen Schipsi, Suzanne Deal Booth.
Art and activism : projects of John and Dominique de Menil
Menil Collection, Houston
344 pages

1971

Peter Bradley, Jefferee James, Steve Cannon, Clement Greenberg, Simone Swan.
The Deluxe show : August 15-September 12, 1971, Houston, Texas
Menil Collection, Houston
74 pages

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