PETER CAIN

In 1995 Cain made a group of drawings and paintings of his partner Sean. Part figure studies, part landscapes, they depict the subject’s reclining head, neck, and shoulders on a sandy beach. They were a departure from the car paintings, a development Peter Schjeldahl hailed as ‘the creation of a new high style able intelligently to capture intimate nuances of contemporary Eros on a public scale.’ The following year Cain began another body of work: paintings and drawings of Los Angeles gas stations and chain stores. A few weeks before his third exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery, where these paintings were to be shown for the first time, Cain died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was thirty-seven years old.

Peter Cain (1959–1997) had his first one-person exhibition in 1989. His work was included in the 1993 and 1995 Whitney Biennials and has been exhibited at museums in Europe, Asia, and the United States.