Cleon PETERSON

Cleon Peterson – Biography, Screen Prints and Original Editions

Cleon Peterson, born in Seattle in 1973 and based in Los Angeles, is an American painter whose canvases, murals and screen prints stage crowds of black and white figures locked in struggles of power and submission. His crisp line and flat, unmodulated colour owe as much to graphic design as to the streets; the Palais de Tokyo has described his imagery as an update of the heritage of ancient Greek vases. London hosted a solo exhibition of his work in 2013, three years before he painted the first mural ever made beneath the Eiffel Tower.

Le Coin des Arts currently offers a group of pencil-signed and numbered screen prints from 2017: both colourways of The Crawler (Black and White), each published in an edition of 150; Doom Alone I and Doom Alone II; and Heathens in black and in white. Each sheet has been chosen for the density of its blacks, the condition of the paper and margins, and a clear provenance.

A late start: Seattle, Pasadena and Cranbrook

Peterson grew up in Seattle among skateboarders, and his youth was a turbulent one, shaped by addiction – a history he has spoken about openly and which the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver later made central to its 2018 exhibition. He came to formal study relatively late, earning a BFA in Graphic Design with honours from the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, in 2004, followed in 2006 by an MFA from the 2D Design department of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. Alongside his studies he worked in design and illustration, notably at Studio Number One, the creative agency of Shepard Fairey, who gave him space in his studio. In 2013 OBEY Giant described him as an associate creative director there.

London and the first solo shows

Peterson began exhibiting in 2007, when Jeffrey Deitch included his paintings in the group show Mail Order Monsters at Deitch Projects in New York and then showed them at Art Basel Miami Beach. In Britain, the gallery The Outsiders presented There Is A War in London from 5 July to 3 August 2013; contemporary coverage noted his acrylic and spray paint on paper mounted on board, and cited Leon Golub, Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley among his references. That same year he began translating his studio painting onto walls, first in Los Angeles and then internationally. Solo exhibitions followed at New Image Art, Los Angeles (End of Days, 2014), the Library Street Collective, Detroit (Poison, 2015), Plus One in Antwerp (The Judgement, 2016) and OTI in Hong Kong (Purity, 2016).

Paris: the Palais de Tokyo, the Eiffel Tower and agnès b.

Across the Channel, Paris has been decisive; he had already appeared there in 2011 in the group show Public Domaine at La Gaîté Lyrique. In 2014 Peterson painted the mural Power for the Lasco Project, the Palais de Tokyo’s urban art programme. For Nuit Blanche on 1 October 2016, whose artistic direction was entrusted to Jean de Loisy and the Palais de Tokyo team, he created Endless Sleep, a 700 m² work painted on the ground beneath the Eiffel Tower by ten painters over some 300 hours, using 260 litres of paint. Seen from the glass floor of the first level, its black and white mandala resolves into two lovers coming together. From 12 January to 18 February 2017 the galerie du jour agnès b. staged Victory, his first solo exhibition in France: some twenty canvases, panels and sculptures on the theme of a victory built on the suffering of the defeated. In 2019 he took part in the Rose Béton biennale at Les Abattoirs in Toulouse.

Museum recognition and recent work

The MCA Denver devoted Shadow of Men to him from 2 February to 27 May 2018, curated by Adam Lerner. That summer, Blood & Soil in Los Angeles confronted monuments, the media and police violence in the America of Charlottesville. Later exhibitions include Stare Into The Sun at Pilevneli, Istanbul (2019), Mr Sinister at albertz benda, New York (2022), and Under the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars at Kaikai Kiki, Tokyo (2023). The Denver Art Museum holds his screen print Truth (What Have We Lost).

Between those landmark shows he has exhibited steadily on several continents. In Los Angeles, OTI presented Hysteria in 2020 and Truth & Lies in 2021, the year Louis Buhl in Detroit staged Exiles and the Cranbrook Art Museum included him in With Eyes Opened: Cranbrook Academy of Art Since 1932. Group projects have taken him to Gillman Barracks in Singapore (Lock Route, 2017), to Warehouse 421 in Abu Dhabi (2016) and back to France for Experience Pommery #14 in Reims (2018), curated by Hugo Vitrani. For the curator Adam Lerner, quoted by Artsy in 2018, the force of the work lies in the contrast between extreme brutality and the rigour and beauty of the compositions – a tension that carries straight through to the prints.

The printed work: colourways, editions and papers

Screen printing suits an art of hard contours and flat, contrasting colour, and it has become Peterson’s principal printmaking medium. Editions are typically issued in two colourways – black and white, sometimes heightened with gold – each with its own edition size. Many have been sold directly through the artist’s online shop: in October 2015, for instance, The Nightcrawler appeared in gold and in white, 75 impressions of each, hand-pulled on deckle-edged 290gsm Coventry Rag at 28 × 28 inches. Others accompany exhibitions, such as the signed edition of 100 released for Victory in Paris and sold only at the gallery. The 2017 sheets in our stock follow the standard format of the period: the two Heathens are signed and numbered out of 150 at 61 × 45.7 cm, and Doom Alone II, released in August 2017, was published in 150 impressions at the same size. To our knowledge no catalogue raisonné of his prints has been published, so prints are identified by title, year, colourway and edition. See the printing and what is an original print.

Collecting Cleon Peterson prints: a buyer’s guide

Edition and numbering. Limited editions are numbered in pencil (38/150, for example). Check the edition size against the original release announcement.

Signature. Signed by hand in pencil, sometimes dated. A printed signature points to a poster or reproduction. See the signature.

Colourway. The Crawler and Heathens exist in black and in white versions, each editioned separately; the exact colourway should always be stated.

Paper and condition. Large black areas show every scuff, white grounds show handling marks and toning. Check corners and edges, often damaged when prints travel in tubes, and favour UV-filtering glazing when framing.

Documentation. In the absence of a catalogue, keep the release notice, original invoice or sale record: these are the only dependable references.

Pitfalls. Skate decks, offset posters and digital prints are not original screen prints, and unnumbered sheets sold as artist’s proofs without paperwork deserve caution. Our guarantees are set out on the authenticity page.

We select Cleon Peterson’s prints for condition and provenance. You may also enjoy Shepard Fairey, Invader, Vhils, Seen and JonOne, as well as contemporary art and our engravings and lithographs.

Sources and further reading

Cleon Peterson – CV · OBEY Giant – There Is A War, The Outsiders, London, 2013 · Palais de Tokyo – Cleon Peterson · Eiffel Tower – Nuit Blanche 2016 · It’s Nice That – Endless Sleep, 2016 · MCA Denver – Shadow of Men · Un œil qui traîne – Victory, 2017 · StreetArtNews – The Nightcrawler