Peter Doig - The Courtauld Gallery

Peter Doig

10 Feb – 29 May 2023
The Courtauld Gallery / Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries
London

The Morgan Stanley Exhibition: Peter Doig presents an exciting new chapter in the career of one of the most celebrated and important painters working today. It is the first exhibition by a contemporary artist to take place at The Courtauld since it reopened in November 2021 following its acclaimed redevelopment.

Since relocating to London, Doig has been developing paintings started in Trinidad, New York and elsewhere, which have been worked up alongside completely fresh paintings, including a new London subject. The works produced for the exhibition at The Courtauld convey this particularly creative experience of transition, as Doig explores a rich variety of places, people, memories and ways of painting.

He has long admired the collection of The Courtauld Gallery and the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists who are at its heart have been a touchstone for Doig’s own painting and printmaking over the course of his career. Visitors will be able to consider Doig’s contemporary works in the light of paintings by earlier artists in The Courtauld’s collection that are important for him, such as those by Cézanne, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Pissarro and Van Gogh.

The Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery is also showcasing the artist’s work as a printmaker with a display that unveils for the first time a series of prints Doig made in response to the poetry of his friend and collaborator, the late Derek Walcott (1930-2017). Entry to Peter Doig: Etchings for Derek Walcott is included in the Gallery Entry + Peter Doig exhibition ticket.

The exhibition is sponsored by Morgan Stanley. Supported by Kenneth C. Griffin and the Huo Family Foundation, with additional support from the Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.

Peter Doig was born in Edinburgh in 1959 but lived in Trinidad as a young child, followed by Canada where he grew up. His ambition to become a painter brought him to London and he studied at several art schools here during the 1980s. Over the following decade, Doig established a reputation as one of the leading painters of his generation.

In 2002, Doig settled in Trinidad where his art became deeply connected to his experiences of the island's life and diverse culture. After living and working there for twenty years, he has recently returned to London, establishing a new studio here. This exhibition presents a group of paintings that Doig created during his last years in Trinidad, alongside a number of works made in his London studio and seen here for the first time. Some of these canvases were begun in Trinidad several years ago and were brought to London where Doig has substantially reworked and completed them.

Across a range of subjects, Peter Doig mixes and layers in paint memories, observations and emotions. He also takes inspiration from art, music, poetry and film. His paintings are often rooted in the experience of places and people, or spring from a photograph or a captivating image in a book. However, Doig is not concerned to represent a particular subject but rather to create something new in paint, as he put it:

I never try to create real spaces — only painted spaces. That's all I am interested in. That may be why there is never really any specific time or place in my paintings.

The theme of creativity runs through the paintings shown here, including works that depict artists (some of them self-portraits), poets and musicians. In making new works for this exhibition, Doig has also reflected on artists in The Courtauld's collection who have long been a touchstone for him, from Manet, Monet and Pissarro to Cezanne and Gauguin. Presented in this context, Doig's work can be seen as recasting and reinventing traditions of painting.