Peter Schuyff (b. 1958, Baarn, Netherlands) is a multidisciplinary artist known for his contribution to 1980s American abstract painting and his affiliation with the Neo-Geo movement. Raised in Vancouver in an intellectual and libertarian environment—his mother was a teacher and his father an economist at Simon Fraser University—Schuyff moved to New York in 1980, entering the heart of the East Village art scene.
His painting is distinguished by an obsessive use of geometry, where hypnotic motifs, fluid patterns, and organic forms emerge from an extremely controlled technique. With thin, translucent pigments, Schuyff constructs visual textures that allude to natural processes, cosmic dynamics, and mathematical structures, evoking a secular spirituality poised between minimalism and psychedelia.
At the height of New York's postmodern era, he exhibited alongside artists such as Ashley Bickerton, Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach, and Meyer Vaisman, while maintaining a discreet and deeply personal stance. His work, unlike the conceptual coldness of many of his contemporaries, contains a meditative and artisanal element, in which time is a material component of the work. Over the years, he also developed a sculptural practice consisting of hand-carving wooden pencils, transforming them into totemic and decorative objects, where gesture and repetition become ritual.
His painting is never purely decorative, but embodies a perceptive tension that challenges the linearity of vision. The artist defines his aesthetic as "a baroque without narrative," where visual beauty coexists with optical destabilization. His works, in fact, demand time, silence, and proximity, resisting the rapid, digital consumption of images.
In the 2000s, he moved away from the New York circuit to live and work between Amsterdam, southern Italy (where he has a studio in Puglia), and Bangkok. His recent production focuses on grid-based works, executed with ascetic rigor, and on small-format paper, often created while traveling. Alongside his painting, he is also a self-taught musician, passionate about blues, jazz, and improvisation, areas that influence the rhythm and structure of his work.
