An artist, art historian, philosopher, and author of numerous articles and monographs, Peter Halley educated at leading universities in the United States. First at the Massachusetts Academy, with its strong Bauhaus tradition and interest to the works of the leaders of American abstractionism, Jackson Pollock, and Frank Stella. Then the Faculty of Art at Yale University and the University of New Orleans.

In the late 1970s, the artist traveled to Europe, Mexico, Central America, and North Africa in his search for new visual genres and traditions. Since the early 1980s Halley begins to work in New York, where his first exhibitions are held, and his first art studies are published. That is the time when he actively works together with Jeff Koons and Ashley Bickerton. His focus of interest at that time becomes the role of abstraction and geometry as a tool for depicting the infinitely increasing complexity of social relations and globalization.

The social structures in Halley’s work are displayed as scale cells, clearly spaced vertically and horizontally. Pathways, highways, neighborhoods, and communications transform the landscapes into geometric patterns. The geometry of the city entangles the entire space of human experience.

Halley’s geometrism reveals his critical analysis of the mechanization and commercialization of the modern world. The simple diagram connections in his paintings become a means of dramatizing political and social life, describing human isolation as well as possible ways of reunification. The philosophy of Peter Halley formed the basis of the Neo-Geometric Conceptualism (Neo-Geo) movement.

From 1996 to 2006 Halley was an editor of Index Magazine, publishing interviews with some of the most creative people of the day. Along with the artists, fashion designers, actors, musicians, and directors that filled all culture magazines, Index interviewed Gaetano Pesce, India Mahdavi, Rem Koolhaas, Ettore Sottsass, Jim Walrod, and Greg Lynn.

Since 2002 Halley serves as director of graduate studies in painting and printmaking at the Yale University School of Art.

The artist’s works are represented in the most prominent private collections and are included in the permanent collections of the world’s major mu-seums, such as:
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (New York, NY, USA)
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, NY, USA)
Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA, USA)
Whitney Museum of American Art New York, NY, USA)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) (San Francisco, CA, USA)
FNAC Collection (Paris, France)
Museum of Modern Kunst (Vienna, Austria)
Krefelder Kunstmuseen (Krefeld, Germany)
Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, MA, USA)
Eli Broad Foundation (Santa Monica, CA, USA)
Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea (Rivoli, Italy)
Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, PA, USA)
Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo, Japan)