Peter Saul

Known for: grotesque political figuration; the Vietnam War paintings

Peter Saul developed a cartoonish, aggressively scatological painting style in the 1960s that engaged simultaneously with Pop Art, underground comix, and the political events of American life — Vietnam, the civil rights movement, the assassinations — with a formal excess and bad taste that kept him outside the mainstream art world for decades. He is now recognized as a precursor to Neo-Expressionism and to the generation of painters including Kara Walker and Henry Taylor. He continues to paint in his nineties.