Peter Young: In the Studio

Peter Young gives a behind-the-scenes look at his studio in Bisbee, Arizona, walking through his six decades-long career.

Peter Young (b. 1940, Pittsburgh) grew up in Los Angeles and studied at Pomona College for two years before moving to New York in 1960. Young's paintings have continuously defied categorization since his early New York years showing with Leo Castelli and Richard Bellamy. He has been described variously as the first post-modernist painter, as well as a minimalist and an abstract surrealist. From the beginning, his paintings have addressed the rigid formal criteria of minimal art that prevailed in the 1960's. Following his first two solo exhibitions in 1967 and 1970 at the Noah Goldowsky Gallery, Young then exhibited at Richard Bellamy's Oil & Steel Gallery in Tribeca in 1984. Through Bellamy's interest in Young's work, it came to the attention of then P.S.1 Director, Alanna Heiss, and in 2007 the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center dedicated a comprehensive survey exhibition to the artist's work, accompanied by a monograph, focusing on the period between 1963 and 1977.

His work has been included in exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, Arizona; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Guggenheim, New York; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; as well as the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Tate St. Ives, United Kingdom; Rolf Ricke, Cologne; and Documenta 5, Kassel, Germany. Peter Young's work is featured in collections, including the Allen Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio; the American University, Washington D.C.; the Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Australia; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Neuberger Museum, Purchase College, New York; Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita; University of Texas, Austin; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.