Peter Saul, a painter, was born in San Francisco in 1934. He studied at the California School of Fine Arts there from 1950 to 1952, and at Washington University from 1952 to 1956, before traveling to Europe, where he remained until 1962.

A parodist and an absurdist, he comments mordantly on aspects of contemporary life, ranging from art, to politics, to the current infatuation with the past. Using garish Day-Glo colors, he creates often crowded canvases filled with violently caricatured and grossly exaggerated forms, misspelled words, puns and odd perspectives. His works both influenced and were influenced by the underground comic books of the early 1970s.

Source: Matthew Baigell, "Dictionary of American Artists"
Peter Falk, "Who Was Who in American Art"

Peter Saul discovered Europe in 1956 and settled in Paris in 1958. He painted in an abstract expressionist style at the American Center in Paris, but his encounter with American magazines in a Left Bank bookshop led him to incorporate subversive motifs from American culture and comic books into his work.