For over fifty years, Irving Petlin has established himself as a master of paint and pastel, evoking powerful images in the tradition of Odilon Redon, James Ensor and Francis Bacon. Petlin has continuously cultivated the power of the image to engage ancient wisdom with the undercurrents of global political climates and events. Surrealism and the Chicago Imagists were the prevailing trends while Irving Petlin attended the Art Institute of Chicago, followed by postgraduate work at Yale University and a subsequent Ryerson Fellowship that allowed him to establish residency in Paris from 1959 to 1963. During his Yale period, Petlin was stationed at the Presidio in San Francisco and was able to paint in the infamous "Monkey Block" nights. Petlin was befriended by many LA artists, including John Altoon, who would sleep on his studio floor during his exhibition at the Dilexi Gallery which was associated with Ferus in Los Angeles at the time. Of this time Petlin says, "They didn't know I was in the Army because they never knew I was in the Army." Following Paris, in response to the United States involvement in Vietnam, Petlin moved to the West Coast in 1964, and organized the Artists' Protest Movement while a visiting artist at UCLA. In collaboration with Mark DiSuvero in 1965, they created the Peace Tower located at Sunset and La Cienega, which generated enormous public attention. Beginning in 1967 and continuing for the next two decades, Petlin was a founder and participant in Artists and Writers Against the War in Vietnam, and the Art Workers Coalition with Hans Haacke, Max Kozloff, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Morris, Mark di Suvero, Lucy Lippard, Leon Golub, Jon Hendricks, Carl Andre, Mary Frank and many others. Perhaps the most famous poster produced by the collaborative was "And Babies? And Babies." From 1967 to 1989, Petlin lived in New York's West Village. He was a neighbor of Meyer Schapiro, a professor of fine arts at Columbia University and the author of seminal books on Van Gogh and Cezanne as well as numerous essays on subjects ranging from early Christian art to Modern art. Over time, the two men became acquaintances leading to a series of portraits of the writer by Petlin. During the following decade, Petlin would execute groups of pastels and paintings dedicated to major literary works by leading post-War intellectuals: Primo Levi, Bruno Schulz, Paul Celan and Edmund Jabes. Since 2000, Petlin has completed two controversial monumental works: Hebron and The Entry of Christ into Washington (after Ensor). With an exhibition history that begins as early as 1956, Petlin has shown with galleries in Chicago, San Francisco, and Turin, as well as Galerie du Dragon in Paris, Palais de Beaux Arts in Brussels (1966), Odyssia Gallery in New York, the Neuberger Museum of Art (1978), Marlborough Gallery in London and New York, Kent Gallery in New York, and presently with Galerie Jan Krugier and Francois Ditesheim & Cie in Switzerland.