Elizabeth Peyton

David Zwirner presents a solo exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Elizabeth Peyton (b. 1965). The exhibition, titled Angel, is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue published by David Zwirner Books in collaboration with the artist.

Peyton finds feeling in everything she depicts—friends, flowers, strangers, and familiar faces. The exhibition’s title can be traced back to the Ancient Greek term angelos, meaning messenger, protector, someone who comes to tell us something to guide us on our way. Peyton’s subjects become angels in her work, traces of light and emotion rendered with the intensity of her particular humanism: a close looking akin to love. In each subject’s specificity, the artist reveals the universal feelings that connect us to each other and to art, and that stretch from our present moment back through time.

This is the first presentation of Peyton’s work in London since Aire and Angels, her 2019 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery which placed the artist’s paintings alongside historical works of portraiture drawn from the museum’s permanent collection.