Following Mary Boone Closure, Legendary Painter Peter Saul Heads to Michael Werner, Venus Over Manhattan -ARTnews

Peter Saul, the seminal pop artist who was represented by the now shuttered Mary Boone gallery since 2012, has moved on to have dual representation with two galleries: Michael Werner Gallery, which has spaces in Märkisch Wilmersdorf, Germany, New York, and London, and New York’s Venus Over Manhattan.

Venus Over Manhattan has yet to announce a show with Saul, but his work will be on view in Europe, beginning September 20 through January 26, 2020, with a show that Michael Werner has organized titled “Peter Saul: Pop, Funk, Bad Painting and More” at Les Abbattoirs, a museum in Toulouse, France.

While he was with Mary Boone, the artist had four solo shows, and participated in group shows with artists such as Ross Bleckner, Nina Chanel Abney, Carroll Dunham, and Julian Schnabel. In a conversation with Saul published by Iris, Boone described him as “a master,” and “a forward thinker.”

In March of 2015, Venus Over Manhattan hosted a survey of 21 of his works from the 1960s and ’70s in a show titled “From Pop to Punk.” Saul, who was born in 1934, is best-known for his vibrant satirical expressionist paintings that blend Surrealist influences and pop-cultural references through a Bay Area Funk sensibility. Often overtly provocative, he described his own work as “humorous instead of menacing,” to ARTnews when the show launched. When speaking of his headspace as he created his dark works during those two decades, he said, “I wanted [modern art] to have juice, you know what I mean? I wanted it to have weird stuff going on.”