You're dreaming, imagine that you are being chased by a diffuse figure, you are an American and just before you wake up you realise that the pursuer's face is that of Fidel Castro's mother! More than likely something is bothering you - but is it really only the old lady? In his surreal painting "Castro's Mother Invades America" (1994), the American artist Peter Saul deals with the social paranoia which is a result of the inability of the United States to solve its national problems. In a society that is slowly being torn apart by domestic conflicts politics tends to focus instead on a less real threat. The painting "Ronald Reagan in Granada" (1985), offers a similar critique and at the same time questions just whose purposes the president's foreign policies really serve.

Peter Saul has always been before his time. While others concerned themselves with formalism he depicted the war in Vietnam. He was one of the originators of the pop art movement, and in the beginning of the 1960s he received critical acclaim but was later overlooked. He has never received full acknowledgement as one of the most influential forerunners of today's post-pop painting. Time has, however, caught up with Saul, who has never been interested in what is politically correct but has always done his own thing. Peter Saul has been chosen to participate in this year's Whitney Biennial in New York.