Colby 12, 2015

Peter Soriano  

Peter Soriano is an abstract Franco-American artist born in the Philippines in 1959 who lives between New York and Penobscot in Maine. Although he began his career as a sculptor, his work is now two-dimensional. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Arts from Harvard College in Cambridge in 1981 and a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Soriano received an artistic education since an early age, by his uncle Fernando Zobel, an eminent Spanish abstract artist. Zobel taught Soriano the importance of drawing, so he quickly returned to drawing to express his experiences and movements around the world. In 2004, after a residence at the Atelier Calder in France, Soriano turned to wall sculptures.

Soriano's work is inspired by the landscapes that surround him, but also by those of the 19th century, prehistoric cave paintings and Japanese studies on Ukiyo-e works on paper.

He is known for his boldly painted bold murals and for his more intimate works on paper, made with pen, ink, watercolor and aerosol spray paint. Soriano's work is gestural and geometric, dominated by a graphic lexicon of marks and notations. In the mid-1990s, Soriano was recognized worldwide for his biomorphic fiberglass sculptures, falsely playful. Then, Soriano completely eliminated the structural elements to introduce another body of work: wall drawings or murals. Parallel to these mural works, Soriano produces works on paper inspired by the same things. These drawings, on Japanese paper, are made using pencils, colored inks, spray paint and watercolor.

"Drawing is a vehicle that I use to situate myself in various spaces: physical, metaphorical and psychological. I use paper to show how these spaces intersect, to help clarify and understand them. "Peter Soriano, 2012.

Soriano's work is owned by museums in the United States and Europe, including the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, in Paris, France; the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, the Harvard Art Museum in Cambridge ... His work is also part of the corporate collection of Neuberger & Berman in New York. The artist has exhibited extensively in galleries and museums in the United States, Europe and Asia.