Emerge Gallery is honored to be exhibiting a new work by color field abstract artist and Saugerties resident Peter Bradley from November 3 - December 30, 2018. This work serves as a preview to a solo exhibition of new work by the artist scheduled for June 2019 at Emerge Gallery.
Peter Bradley is widely noted for curating the first major show in the US to comprehensively integrate white modernists with their black contemporaries. Originally invited to participate in the Whitney’s “Contemporary Black Artists In America” exhibition, Bradley declined because of their reduction of him and others to just black artists. Instead, with the support of art collector John de Menil, he curated The DeLuxe Show in 1971 in Houston. He exhibited famous artists of the time, such as Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski and Larry Poons, alongside abstract black artists, and in doing so, created a milestone in art and civil rights history.
Peter Bradley, © Sean Donnola, 2018, for New York Times
Bradley’s abstract work with the newly developed acrylic gel paint by Sam Golden — founder of Golden Paints — is known to have 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 luminaries such as Miles Davis.
from Stone House series, mixed media on canvas, 77" x 74", © Peter Bradley, 2018
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 Art in Houston, The New York City Museum of Arts, 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.
Peter Bradley continues to create 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. Bradley’s work will be exhibited at Emerge Gallery alongside the group exhibition, Petit: An Exhibition of Small Work in November and Primar(il)y Red: Celebrating the Color Red in December.
Read the New York Times article Why Have There Been No Great Black Art Dealers? (June 20, 2018) featuring Peter Bradley
Read the Hyperallergic article How Black Modern Artists Defined a Singular Narrative in 1971 (January 17, 2017) featuring an extended interview with Peter Bradley