ArtistsPeter Saul
Peter Saul

Peter Saul

American, 1934
San Francisco, CA, USA
PaintingPop ArtFiguration
Representation
None documented
4
Institutional Exhibitions
24
Works in Collection
38
Assets Indexed
4
Authority-backed Facts
0
Publications Referenced
80%
Profile Completeness

Cultural Positioning

Movements
  • Pop Art
  • Figuration
Related Artists
No edges recorded
Influence Graph
No influence edges encoded yet.

Selected Institutional Exhibitions

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No image
Committed to Print
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1988
No image
California Prints
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1972
No image
The Artist as Adversary
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1971
No image
Pop Art Prints, Drawings, and Multiples
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1970
About

Why this artist matters now

Peter Saul is an American painter known for aggressive, densely layered figuration that combines carnival grotesquerie with political satire. Working in acrylic and oil since the 1960s, he developed a maximalist approach to the canvas, filling pictorial space with writhing forms, garish color, and deliberately crude distortions of anatomy and proportion. His work emerged within postwar American painting but resists the period's dominant abstraction, instead pursuing a deliberately vulgar and confrontational figuration rooted in comic art and low culture. Saul's paintings function as visual polemics, channeling rage and absurdity into formally expansive, visually overwhelming compositions.

Source: Moma Bulk 2026 05 04 · Trust score: 92% · Updated 25d ago

Graph relationships

Taste overlap and adjacency

Movement
Pop Art
Medium
Painting
Related Artists
11 in graph
Institutional

Museum Collections

Canonical record

Artworks (24)

View all 24 artworks →
Record

Images

Artsy artist portrait
Artsy
Untitled (Art Institute of Chicago)
Art Institute of Chicago
Untitled (Art Institute of Chicago)
Art Institute of Chicago
Record

Movements and affiliations

Institutional

Representation & Collections

In collection
Art Institute of Chicago
In collection
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
In collection
Museum of Modern Art
New York, US
Market

Auction sale history

Houses that have sold works by this artist at auction
Market

Auction History

Range: $29,210$2,500,000
WorkAuction HouseDateEstimateHammer Price
Bizarro #3Christie'sMay 2026$30,000 – $50,000$29,210
UntitledPhillipsFeb 2026$3,000 – $5,000Unsold
Vinsent Van DawgChristie'sFeb 2025$50,000 – $70,000Unsold
De Kooning's "Woman with Bicycle"Christie'sNov 2023$100,000 – $150,000Unsold
Human DignityChristie'sMay 2023$300,000 – $400,000$819,000
Modern homeChristie'sDec 2022€120,000 – €180,000€289,800
Mutant Bees Attack Big MoneyChristie'sNov 2022$120,000 – $180,000$170,100
Humble CowboyChristie'sNov 2022$180,000 – $250,000$289,800
KillChristie'sJun 2022€25,000 – €35,000€88,200
Soft watch in a toiletChristie'sJun 2022€70,000 – €100,000€138,600
Showing 10 of 20 results
Record

Exhibitions and timeline