Background
Peter Joseph was born in 1929 in London, United Kingdom.
Peter Joseph was born in 1929 in London, United Kingdom.
According to existing data, Peter Joseph is self-taught.
Joseph began his career in advertising. During 1969 – 1972 he also taught at Portsmouth Art College in Portsmouth, United Kingdom. Since the sixties, and after leaving behind a career in advertising, Peter has spent his life painting and contemplating painting. Represented by Lisson Gallery, he is their longest standing artist, and has exhibited internationally with numerous other galleries. He has had solo exhibitions at Unité d’habitation Le Corbusier, Briey-en-fôret in France in 1998; Museum of Modern Art in Oxford in 1994, and Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 1983. Joseph creates preliminary “sketches”, using colored paper and fabric until he finds an appealing spatial composition. He uses that template as a guide for painting thin layers onto canvas, methodically recreating the exact desired effects of light and shape. Currently, he lives in the countryside outside Stroud, Gloucestershire.
Drawing (Untitled, Cream/Black)
Yellow Painting
Drawing (Untitled, Blue/Green)
Untitled
Untitled
Bright Orange with Green
delete
Grey / Green with Black
Ochre with Brown Violet (332)
Light Brown with Dark Red (324)
Rose with Dark Red
Pink Colour with Brown
Dark Blue/Black Border No.37
Untitled
Light Orange with Light Green, August 1989
Dark Ochre with Black Border
Brown Colour with Grey-Black Border
Ochre with Dusty Blue
Peter Joseph has, over the course of decades, dedicated his practice to seeking the potential in constraint. He created meditative, two-colour paintings, which set one rectangle within a frame of a darker shade. These early works are characterized by perfect symmetry, where every decision about colour and proportion can be seen to be redolent of time, mood or place. More recently his format has departed from his established 'architecture' to divide the canvas into two planes, horizontally or vertically, wherein loose brushwork, natural tones and patches of exposed canvas tap into new feeling.
Quotations:
"To me painting is everything, and there’s nothing that we have in society that’s the equivalent. Real painting leaves you absolutely immobile, because you’ve met something; you’ve met yourself."
"A painting must generate feeling otherwise it is dead."
Peter is married to a woman named Denise, an animal rights activist.