Peter Lowe

Peter Lowe (1913-1989) is one of those gifted Asian American artists from the mid-century period whose work disappeared from sight and remains virtually unknown today. He was born in Los Angeles but reverse-emigrated to southern China, where he studied caligraphy and sculpture with Buddhist monks. When he came to San Francisco as an adult he studied painting at the California School of Fine Arts with Otis Oldfield and Spencer Mackey, and then with a group of young artists in Chinatown. He first exhibited at the de Young Museum in the early 1930s as a member of the Chinese Art Association and the Chinatown Arts Club. He got a job on the WPA at the behest of Dong Kingman, and was eventually invited to assist Herman Volz on a large mural in the Federal Building in Downtown San Francisco. Volz then hired Lowe to work on a mosaic mural at San Francisco City College, and on murals at the 1939 Treasure Island World’s Fair. Lowe worked on Diego Rivera’s Pan American Unity mural, and on projects run by Robert McChesney and Clay Spohn. The artists on these teams were ethnically diverse and Lowe expressed a fondness for this period of government-sponsored work. It allowed him to develop his crude, quirky, surreal style which helped him gain membership into the San Francisco Art Association. He exhibited with the avant garde group at the San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMOMA) in 1940, 1942 and 1945. But for reasons unknown, probably related to Lowe’s difficulty with English and constant poverty, he disappeared from the scene, moved to Oakland, and the rest of his life remains something of a mystery.

Submitted by Grand Dukes Theater