Peter Dean: Visions and Fantasies

I interpret reality into fantasy and back again. I’m a juggler of color and textures. I’m a seer of the past and a prophet of the future. I ride the hurricane. – Peter Dean

This Cape Cod Museum of Art (CCMoA) exhibition of Peter Dean’s work is a cornucopia of vibrant colorful landscapes, symbols, and phantasmagoria from an artist whose work during the turbulent 1970s and 80s, when abstract art was popular, was largely dismissed, but today seems to have reverberations with contemporary art.

Dean, who died in 1993, was born in Berlin in 1934.  Dean and his parents fled Nazi Germany for the United States in 1938.  He studied geology and travelled for years before dedicating himself to painting in the late 1960s.  He was influenced by the art movements of German Expressionism and Fauvism that flourished in the early twentieth century.  In 1969, Dean co-founded the Rhino Horn Group, a group of artists whose passion was to make art that spoke up against the horrors of war and other contentious issues of division in our country.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.