Peyton, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Peyton – Biography

Elizabeth Peyton (born 1965) is an American painter who rose to popularity in the mid 1990s. She is a contemporary artist best known for stylized and idealized portraits of her close friends, pop celebrities, and European monarchy.

In the mid-80s, she studied fine arts at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her first successful exhibition in New York City was held in a room of the Chelsea hotel (mainly drawings). People who wished to see the exhibition would just go to the reception of the hotel and ask for the room key. She went on to exhibit regularly at the Gavin Brown Gallery and started receiving very positive reviews from the New York Times and The Village Voice. Her career was launched, a fact later endorsed by the art market where the price of her works has steadily soared (an oil on canvas representing John Lennon was sold for a record $800 000 in 2006). Works by Elizabeth Peyton are now in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.