Elizabeth Peyton's New York Solo Debut at David Zwirner Features Mythological and Contemporary Portraits

Elizabeth Peyton's exhibition "mountains in my heart (the death of Sarpedon)" marks her first solo presentation with David Zwirner in New York. Occupying the gallery's West 19th Street location, the show presents small-scale figurative paintings created over the past three years. A central work reinterprets Henri-Léopold Lévy's 19th-century painting of Sarpedon's death from the Iliad, which Peyton first encountered at the Musée d'Orsay's "Paris 1874" exhibition. The artist's subjects range from Trojan hero Sarpedon to 20th-century French philosopher Simone Weil and contemporary musician Cameron Winter. Since 2023, Peyton has maintained a studio at the Louvre in Paris as an artist-in-residence, where she has conducted drawing exercises with students from the Beaux Arts. Her artistic approach involves beginning with single marks and allowing compositions to unfold organically, seeking to create "open containers" of movement. The exhibition includes two etchings of Cameron Winter, still lifes, and portraits of friends like book designer Jules Estèves. Peyton describes her Louvre residency as transformative, particularly her engagement with Leonardo da Vinci's "Saint Anne" painting. She selects subjects based on their embodiment of universal human experience rather than categorizing them as historical or contemporary figures. The artist aims to contribute "love" and hopeful possibilities through her work, viewing art-making as her method of adding to the world's landscape.