The artistic achievements of Peter Schlesinger—perhaps best known as the muse and former romantic partner of David Hockney—are getting a rare moment in the sun at this year’s PAD London art and design fair, where his Untitled (2021) has been awarded the fair’s Contemporary Design Prize.
The New York-based photographer, painter and sculptor’s work is the focal point of a presentation by London’s Tristan Hoare gallery, which is debuting at this year’s fair. On view are candid pictures he took of figures in his artistic circle in London and Paris during the 1960s and 70s, including the French singer Amanda Lear, the photographer Norman Parkinson and Hockney. “I like the informalness, the idea that he seems to be having a good time,” Hoare says of Schlesinger.
Peter Schlesinger’s Untitled (2021) won PAD London’s Contemporary Design Prize Courtesy of Tristan Hoare
Schlesinger began making ceramics after returning to the US, creating large-scale works that recall antiquity. The prize-winning piece, which has sold for £35,000, is a sandy-textured pot with blue and gold patterning—and eye motifs towards the lip.
Hoare explains that despite his prolific and eclectic output, Schlesinger has stayed out of the spotlight for more than three decades, and remains under-recognised outside of the US. “We did an exhibition of his drawings with a few of his pots in the gallery in May, and he said that was the first exhibition he’d had since, I think, 1991 or 1992,” the gallerist says.
Schlesinger appears in many of Hockney’s works, including Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures) (1972), which became the British artist’s most expensive painting when it sold for $90m at Christie’s in 2018. The PAD display, however, is a chance to move Schlesinger further away from his reputation as Hockney’s ex-boyfriend, Hoare says. “I’m trying to approach it on the basis of, yes, that’s part of his past, but really I want to focus on him.”
• PAD London is at Berkeley Square, Mayfair, until 13 October