Accompanying a major exhibition of new and recent works by Peter Doig at The Courtauld, London, this publication will present an exciting new chapter in the career of one of the most celebrated and important painters working today. It will include paintings and etchings created since the artist’s move from Trinidad to London in 2021. It includes a major group of large paintings made for this exhibition.
Doig (born Edinburgh, 1959) is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading artists. He secured his early reputation in the 1990s as a highly original figurative painter, producing large-scale, immersive landscape paintings that exist somewhere between actual places and the realms of the imagination. Layered into his paintings is a rich array of inspirations, such as scenes from films, album covers, and the art of the past. His works are often related to the places where he has lived and worked, including the UK, Canada and Trinidad. In 2021, Doig moved back to London where he has set up a new studio. This new studio has become the crucible for developing paintings started in Trinidad and New York and elsewhere, which are being 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, as Doig explores a rich variety of places, people, memories and ways of painting that have accompanied him to his new London studio. For Doig, printmaking is an integral part of his artistic life: his prints and his paintings often work in dialogue with one another. The exhibition and catalogue will also showcase the artist’s work as a printmaker by unveiling a new series of etchings that Doig has made in response to poems by his friend, the Nobel prize winning poet Derek Walcott (1930-2017). This will allow readers to consider the full span of Doig’s creative process. Doig has long admired the collection of The Courtauld Gallery. The Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists who are at its heart have been a touchstone for his own painting and printmaking over the course of his career. His works presented here will reflect his current artistic preoccupations and readers 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 publication will explore how Doig recasts and reinvents traditions and practices of painting to create his own highly distinctive works.