Peter Beard

PETER BEARD (New York, 1938-2020).
"World Series cries Red Blooded American Returns to Schweitzer film," 1964.
Ink, oil and enamel on paper.
Framed with museum glass.
Signed, located and dated "Cassis,'64.
Provenance: Private collection, New York.
Measurements: 24,5 x 32 cm; 40 x 48 cm (frame).
Work based on the feature film "Albert Schweitzer" (1957) by American artist and philanthropist Jerome Hill (1905-1972), which won the Oscar for Best Documentary that year. Peter Beard, in this unclassifiable work, gives a transfer to his imaginary world by intermingling a series of animals, characters, architectures, notes in French and English, and including a self-portrait in the foreground. This work is located in Cassis, on the French Riviera, where Peter Beard had a residence like Jerome Hill, who moved to France to escape the social prejudices he faced in the United States.
Peter Beard was an American artist, photographer, chronicler and writer who lived and worked in New York City, Montauk and Kenya. His photographs of Africa, African animals and the journals that often integrated his photographs have been widely shown and published since the 1960s. Beard began writing journals as a child and taking photographs, as an extension of the journals, at the age of 12. A graduate of the Pomfret School, he entered Yale University in 1957, intending to pursue pre-med studies, but changed his major to art history. At Yale, he participated in the Scroll and Key secret society. His mentors at Yale included Josef Albers, Richard Lindner, and Vincent Scully. Beard graduated with a B.A. in 1961.Inspired by earlier trips to Africa in 1955 and 1960, Beard traveled to Kenya after graduating. Working in Tsavo National Park, he photographed and documented the disappearance of 35,000 elephants and other wildlife, which would later become the subject of his first book, The End of the Game. During this time, Beard acquired Hog Ranch, a property near the Ngong Hills adjacent to the coffee estate owned by Karen Blixen, which would become his lifelong base of operations in East Africa.Beard's first exhibition was at the Blum Helman Gallery, New York City, in 1975 and throughout his career he has had landmark museum exhibitions at the International Center of Photography, New York City, in 1977, and at the Centre National de la Photographie, Paris, in 1997. Gallery exhibitions followed in Berlin, London, Toronto, Madrid, Milan, Tokyo and Vienna. Beard's work is included in private collections worldwide.