Elizabeth Peyton American, b. 1965

Best known for her intimate portraits of celebrities, friends, and historical figures, Elizabeth Peyton works with transparent washes of pigment and a jewel-toned palette to explore notions of idolatry and obsession. Her paintings privilege emotion and process over strict likeness. As Peyton has noted, “A painting of a person can be descriptive, but for me it’s about all the things that make up a picture—the feelings, the brushstrokes—more than describing somebody.” Her subjects have included figures such as Kurt Cobain, Barack Obama, and David Bowie.

 

Peyton studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York. In 1993, she held a seminal solo exhibition of drawings in room 828 of the historic Chelsea Hotel, an event that marked the beginning of her career. By her second solo exhibition in 1995 at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, she had achieved widespread critical acclaim. 

 

Peyton’s work is held in leading public and private collections worldwide, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; The Cranford Collection, Guernsey, UK; Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Rubell Museum, Miami; Saint Louis Art Museum; Seattle Art Museum; Boros Collection, Berlin; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, which has acquired more than thirty of Peyton’s drawings and paintings over the past twenty-five years.