Adam Pendleton studied through the Artspace Independent Study Program in Pietrasanta, Italy. He is a central figure in contemporary American painting, redefining the medium through layered processes that merge abstraction, text, and photographic elements into dynamic compositions.

His work has been presented at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (2025–27), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2024–25), Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna (2023–24), Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis (2023–24), the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2022), the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2022), and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2021–22). He has also exhibited at the New Museum, New York; and the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans.

His works are included in the collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Tate Modern, London; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 2024, he received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Painting from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.