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; Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgewood, Connecticut; California African American Museum, Los Angeles; 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.
Born 1940, Connellsville, Pennsylvania
Lives 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
2025
The Bundy Modern, Waitsfield, Vermont (forthcoming)
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
2024
70 Main Street, Thomaston, Maine, A Particular Kind of Heaven
Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica in collaboration with Aïshti Foundation, Palazzo Barberini, Rome, Day for Night: New American Realism, curated by Massimiliano Gioni and Flaminia Gennari Santori
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
