Since the early 1960s, painter Peter Saul (born 1934 in San Francisco) has produced an oeuvre whose uncompromising and irreverent commentary on American culture and ideology has made it consistently stand out from post-war American art. As parodist, moralist and absurdist he has commented on political events—from the Vietnam war to Abu Ghraib—with the same acerbic wit as on the sacred cows of the art world—be they Marcel Duchamp, or Willem de Kooning. Whether the target of his ridicule is O.J. Simpson, George W. Bush, Bernie Madoff or indeed himself: as a repeat offender with a paintbrush, Peter Saul is always at the cutting edge of his time. With garishly coloured pop-surrealistic paintings, the anti-authoritarian 75 year-old explores the boundaries of what might be called ‘good taste’, and showing no signs of mellowing with age, he lustily takes aim at political correctness. While there is no doubt about Peter Saul’s influence on a generation of artists such as Carroll Dunham, Peter Doig and Paul McCarthy, museums and the art market have only recently started giving him the recognition he is due. Today, his paintings can be found in the collections all of the great New York museums (Metropolitan, MoMA and Whitney)—but so far, none of these institutions have dared give him the long overdue retrospective.