Elizabeth Peyton

The catalogue for Peyton's 2001 Deichtorhallen Hamburg exhibition, this was the first substantial European survey of a painter who had made intimacy — and the small canvas — central to contemporary portraiture.

Published by Hatje Cantz with the Deichtorhallen, the bilingual German and English volume brings together some seventy paintings, drawings, photographs and prints. Zdenek Felix, who edited the book, and Ronald Jones examine Peyton's method of working from two kinds of source: public images lifted from print media and private snapshots she takes herself, a distinction that lets Princess Diana sit beside friends and lovers without a change of register. Her titles usually give only a first name. The exhibition ran from 28 September 2001 to 13 January 2002.

Peyton was born in Danbury, Connecticut in 1965 and studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her later books include the print survey Ghost and the National Portrait Gallery's Aire and Angels; this early catalogue records the moment her work moved from downtown New York attention to museum scale.