Margaret Peterson

Margaret Peterson (1902 - May 15, 1997) was an American painter of abstract art and known for creating a style that was highly influenced by the art of the Indigenous peoples of North America.

Biography Peterson was born in Seattle, Washington. In the 1920s she studied at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1926 with a Bachelor in Arts and soon joined its faculty of Fine Arts in 1928. The years between 1928 and 1950 were productive years for Peterson; this included a funded trip to Europe (1931), several exhibitions, marriage to her husband, the Canadian writer Howard O'Hagan (1937), and a year spent at Green Point, Cowichan Bay, British Columbia to study Indigenous Art in Victoria's former anthropological museum (1947–1948).

Throughout the 1950s, she would continue to exhibit and travel. In 1951, she went to both Mexico and Guatemala and saw the arts of the Toltecs, Zapotecs, Aztecs, and Mayan cultures and also returned to Cowichan Bay.

Artistic practice Abstract art is to representative art what poetry is to prose. --Margaret Peterson Throughout her career, Peterson drew from many influences, especially from abstract and Indigenous artworks. In her early career, she was mainly influenced by cubist and other modernist artists. She has said that after seeing work by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, that “They changed my direction in art, and life”. Biblioteca Nacional, Mexico City, 1934