b. 1953, New York, N.Y.

Peter Halley was born in 1953 in New York. He began his formal training at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, which he attended from 1967 to 1971. While there, he read Josef Albers’s Interaction of Color, which would influence Halley throughout his career. In 1976 the artist graduated from Yale University, New Haven, with a degree in art history. In 1973, Halley lived in New Orleans, where he was inspired by the non-Western influences of the city. It was also during this year that Halley began using commercial materials in his art and became acquainted with the writings of Robert Smithson. Halley received an MFA from the University of New Orleans in 1978, and had his first solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans that same year.

In 1978 Halley spent a semester teaching design at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, and has continued to teach on and off throughout his career. In 1980 Halley moved back to New York and had his first solo exhibition in New York at P.S. 122. At this time, Halley was drawn to the Pop themes and social issues addressed in New Wave music and used it as a model for his art. In the early 1980s, Halley began writing for Arts Magazine and became involved in contemporary theory. Peter Halley: Collected Essays 1981–1987 was published in 1988. Inspired by Jean Baudrillard’s theory of simulation, Halley’s own philosophy became the basis for Neo-Geometric Conceptualism (also known as Neo-Geo), a term associated with the work of Halley, Ashley Bickerton, and Jeff Koons.

In 1984, Halley became involved with the International Monument Gallery in the East Village. With the support of the gallery, Halley’s career began to take off. In 1986 an exhibition of the Neo-Geo artists at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York heralded the group’s growing success. By 1989 the artist’s career was well established, and he was exhibiting with prominent galleries in the United States and Europe. Around this time, Halley began to be more experimental with color. An exhibition of Halley’s paintings was exhibited at the Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld, Germany; Maison de la Culture et de la Communication de Saint-Etienne; and Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, in 1989. In 1991–92 a retrospective exhibition of Halley’s work toured Europe, traveling to the Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lausanne; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. In 1992, the artist had his first solo exhibition at a United States museum at the Des Moines Art Center. Halley taught at Columbia University, UCLA, and the School of Visual Arts before assuming the role of the Director of Graduate Studies in Painting and Printmaking at Yale University School of Art in 2002. From 1996 to 2006 he also published index magazine. Halley lives and works in New York.