Raymond Pettibon American, b. 1957

Raymond Pettibon is an American artist renowned for his provocative approach to artmaking, blending bold graphic style with incisive social commentary.  Emerging from the punk rock scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s in California, Pettibon initially gained recognition from his distinctive album cover artwork and flyer designs for bands such as Black Flag, Sonic Youth, and Minutemen. His raw, expressive imagery captured the ethos of the underground music scene and established him as a seminal figure in alternative art and culture.

Pettibon’s oeuvre is characterized by its illustrative qualities and use of text elements, drawn from a diverse array of source material including literature, politics, popular culture, art history, and art history. Series such as Surfers and his baseball works capture the artist’s lifelong fascination with sports culture, particularly in relation to themes of social equity and the American dream. Subverting the precedent of classic comics—in which text serves as a caption to a scene—Pettibon uses text as a medium by which to expose the underlying realities of society. Subjects such as power and authority, violence and conflict, sexuality and desire, and existentialism invite viewers to confront their own life experiences and personal ideologies.

Throughout his career, Pettibon has exhibition extensively at museums and galleries worldwide. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany; and Kunsthal Roterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands.