photo by © Dion Ogust
Emerge Gallery is honored to be exhibiting a collection of new work by Color Field abstract artist and Saugerties resident Peter Bradley from June 1 - 30, 2019. An artist talk is planned for Sunday, May 19, 2019, at 2 PM at the Woodstock School of Art, Woodstock, NY, where artist Ellen Martin will converse with Bradley about his work and life. The exhibition's opening reception is scheduled for Saturday, June 1, 2019, from 6-9 PM.
Peter Bradley is widely noted for curating The DeLuxe Show — the first major show in the US to comprehensively integrate white modernists with their black contemporaries. He was originally invited to participate in the Whitney’s “Contemporary Black Artists In America” exhibition but declined because of their reduction of him and others to just black artists. Instead, with the support of art collector John de Menil, Bradley curated The DeLuxe Show in 1971 in Houston. The show exhibited famous artists of the time — such as Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski and Larry Poons — alongside abstract black artists. The DeLuxe Show became a milestone in both art and civil rights history.
Bradley combined rich layers of color with broad gestural moments in working with the newly developed acrylic gel paint by Sam Golden. His work expanded the expressiveness found in acrylic painting and had a direct influence on many abstract artists, notably the New New Painters of the late 1970s. He is also known to be one of New York’s original black art dealers — he was Associate Director at the prestigious Perls Gallery on Madison Ave where he sold Calders, Picassos and other 20th century modern masters; he spent time in South Africa in the 1980s responding to apartheid through his sculpture; and immersed himself in the jazz world by touring with musician Art Blakey and befriending jazz musicians such as Miles Davis.
Bradley’s work is in the permanent collections of a number of galleries and museums, including The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, The New York City Museum of Art, African American Museum in Dallas, The Fogg Museum at Harvard University, and Johannesburg Art Foundation in South Africa. In 2017 Bradley completed an Artist in Residence at the Squire Foundation.
With the recent interest in black artists over 70, Peter Bradley’s work and career is sure to be a stand out. He continues to paint at his home studio in a historic 18th Century stone house in Saugerties, NY. Many in the community may not be aware of this valuable resource right in their own backyard. Emerge Gallery is pleased to introduce, or reintroduce, the work of this important artist to the Hudson Valley and beyond.
Additional reading about Peter Bradley:
Peter Bradley and The DeLuxe Show were featured in the Culture Type article "Whitney Museum’s ‘Spilling Over’ Exhibition Celebrates Color and Calls to Mind an Earlier Moment in Art History" (May 24, 2019)
Peter Bradley was featured in the New York Times article “Why Have There Been No Great Black Art Dealers?” by © Janella Zara (June 20, 2018)
Peter Bradley was featured in the Hyperallergic article “How Black Modern Artists Defied a Singular Narrative in 1971” by © Jessica Bell Brown (January 17, 2017)
An Interview with Peter Bradley from © BOMB Magazine (January 17, 2017)
Additional information on The DeLuxe Show