Gladstone Gallery has announced U.S. representation of Peter Saul, the painter whose vividly cartoonish canvases have for more than six decades detonated the boundaries of taste and tradition. Known for his luminous color and biting satire, Saul has reimagined painting as a stage for cultural critique, shaping a body of work as unruly as the world it reflects. The gallery has also announced the appointment of Anna Christina Furney as Director. Celebrated for her close collaborations with artists, Furney spent fourteen years at Venus Over Manhattan, first as its inaugural Director and later as Partner with founder Adam Lindemann. She will join Gladstone on September 2nd, bringing both curatorial vision and a spirit of collaboration to the gallery’s leadership.
“Peter Saul’s place as one of the most influential voices in contemporary painting resonates deeply with Gladstone’s commitment to artists who have profoundly shifted the course of visual culture. It is with great excitement that we welcome him to Gladstone’s roster,”
said Max Falkenstein, Senior Partner at Gladstone.
“We are equally pleased to welcome Anna to our senior team, who is known as an outstanding partner and advocate for artists. She also brings to the gallery an astute, global understanding of the contemporary art landscape and market.”
Over more than 70 years, Saul’s practice has been distinguished by an unflinching resistance to convention, an embrace of vivid color, and a sharp, often satirical approach to subject matter. His work persistently reimagines and transforms familiar icons, art history, and mass-media tropes into surreal, absurdist narratives that challenge norms and hierarchies. By merging comic absurdity with formal rigor, Saul has consistently carved out a singular position within contemporary art, challenging the boundaries of both style and ideology.Furney, who has worked with Saul for 14 years at Venus Over Manhattan, brings to Gladstone an outstanding reputation for working with artists and deep understanding of the contemporary art landscape. She has spearheaded and collaborated on notable exhibitions with artists including Peter Saul,Yuichiro Ukai, Keiichi Tanaami, Neil Jenney, Jim Nutt, Seth Becker, and Richard Mayhew, as well as the Estates of Joan Brown, Robert H. Colescott, H.C. Westermann, and Joseph Elmer Yoakum. Furney’s curatorial work at Venus includes the exhibition, Jim Nutt: Portraits (2022), featuring an unprecedented volume of work on canvas and paper by the artist, which was named as one of the top exhibitions of the year by The New York Times’ Roberta Smith; Robert Colescott: Women (2022), the first exhibition to trace the development of the artist’s representations of women; the first-ever exhibition of Peter Saul’s early mixed-media works on paper; the largest New York exhibition in nearly 50 years for the self-taught artist Joseph Elmer Yoakum (2019), which served as a prelude to a multi-venue museum survey for the artist; and the first U.S. exhibition for the celebrated Japanese self-taught artist Yuichiro Ukai (2023). Furney also initiated a 2020 Joan Brown painting survey that jumpstarted the artist’s market reconsideration and immediately preceded Brown’s 2022 museum survey at SFMOMA.
Prior to her role at Venus Over Manhattan, Furney worked with Simon de Pury and Michaela de Pury at Phillips de Pury auction house, where she managed the chairman’s office and oversaw his collection and advisory work. She graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont.
“I am thrilled to be joining Gladstone Gallery and look forward to continuing my work with Peter Saul. He joins a deeply considered program that reflects tremendous connoisseurship and exceptional respect for their artists,”
said Furney.
About the artist
Peter Saul was born in 1934 in San Francisco, California. He attended the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, and the Washington University School of Fine Arts in St. Louis. In 2020, the New Museum of Contemporary Art mounted “Peter Saul: Crime and Punishment,” the first retrospective of Peter Saul’s work in New York. In 2019, les Abattoirs, Toulouse presented “Peter Saul: Pop, Funk, Bad Painting and More,” a major retrospective of Saul’s work, which traveled to Le Delta in Namur, Belgium. His work has been the subject of numerous international solo presentations, including recent exhibitions at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg; the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; the Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg; The Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery Met, Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, New York; and the Fondation Salomon Art Contemporain, Alex. In 2008, his work was the subject of a traveling retrospective curated by Dan Cameron, which opened at the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, and traveled to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia and the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans. An earlier retrospective of his work opened at the Musée de l’Hôtel Bertrand, Dole, in 1999, and traveled to the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Mons. Saul’s work is frequently featured in major group exhibitions at institutions both stateside and abroad, including recent presentations at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; The Met Breuer, New York; the Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln; Kunsthalle Emden; the Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich; the New York Academy of Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Musée d’Art Contemporain, Marseille; the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow; MoMA PS1, New York the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence; and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus. His work is held in the permanent collections of numerous public institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Dallas Museum of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 1993, Saul received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. In 2008, Saul received the Artist’s Foundation Legacy Award. In 2010, Saul was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Peter Saul lives and works in New York City and Germantown, New York.
