Peter Halley

Peter Halley – A precocious and art-loving child

Peter Halley was born in New York City on 24 September 1953. His father, the famous lawyer and politician Rudolph Halley died when Peter was just three. Other relatives include the writer Carl Solomon, the dramatist Samuel Shipman and the publisher A. A. Wyn, who brought authors such as William Burroughs, Philip K. Dick and Samuel R. Delaney to the American market. Peter Halley himself was a precocious child, interested already at school in the fine arts and the diverse forms of media. He produced the radio programme of his school’s own station and painted his first pictures in his grandfather Aaron’s studio. He finally began studying art history at Yale which he completed with a dissertation on Henri Matisse, and lived for a time in New Orleans where he acquired his Master of Arts. During this time, he travelled several times to Mexico, Central America, North Africa and Europe.

Geometric cells in fluorescent colours

Peter Halley first attracted attention as an artist in the 1980s when he used fluorescent colours to open up geometric spaces, inspired by the entirely geometric structure of the city of New York around him. The innovative artistic decision to use fluorescent Day-Glo colours was made in the context of the high-tech world, the neon signs, video displays, bright lights and ticker tape that seemed ubiquitous in 1980s New York. In later years, he used this method to depict the glistening world of the digital screens in the age of computers, tablets and smartphones. His first major exhibition was in New York in 1985, followed by further exhibitions in various renowned galleries, including Gallery Bruno Bischofsberger and Gallery Thaddaeus Ropac. Recurring and fundamental elements in Peter Halley’s painting are the ‘cells’ and ‘prisons’, as he himself called his geometric colour fields. 

Great art arises in the head of the artist

Peter Halley views painting as a process that takes place in thoughts, a work of the brain for which the hand of the artist does not necessarily have to guide a brush. In the 1990s, he started with the concept of larger installations which were related to their respective exhibition location. Alongside his practical artistic activities, Halley also works as an art theorist, and has composed numerous essays on Postmodernism, Post-Structuralism and the digital revolution which were published in a two-volume compilation. Peter Halley lays great value in the mediation of artistic teaching to future generations, and directed the support programme for young painters at Yale University from 2002 to 2011.

Peter Halley is married to the painter Ann Craven and has two children from a former marriage. He lives and works in New York.