Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1899 Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary)

Died: 1967 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1934

Other name/s: László Weisz, Péri László

Biography

Sculptor Peter Laszlo Peri (né László Weisz) was born into a proletarian Jewish family in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary) on 13 June 1899. As a teenager, he persuaded his family to change their name from Weisz to Peri. Politicised from youth, he enrolled at the Hungarian Soviet’s Proletarian Art Workshops in 1919. Subsequently, he studied in Budapest, followed by a brief period in Paris and Vienna. In 1921 he created his first abstract geometric reliefs and in 1922 held the first of two joint exhibitions with László Moholy-Nagy at Berlin's progressive Der Sturm Gallery. From 1923 he studied architecture in Berlin. Peri contributed significantly to the development of Constructivism by challenging the concept of the flat surface, creating irregularly shaped reliefs and opening new visual planes. In 1924 he exhibited with Nell Walden and the architect Ludwig Hilberseimer, showing Constructivist artworks alongside his new Productivist/architectural works. In 1928, he signed the manifesto and statutes of the Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists of Germany (Asso), calling for a reinvigoration of proletarian culture.

In 1933, he immigrated to England after his second wife Mary Macnaghten (granddaughter of social reformer, Charles Booth) was arrested in possession of Communist propaganda. Once settled in London, he explored new materials and approaches to sculpture-making, experimenting with the use of concrete, and creating figurative pieces without the use of moulds, but never abandoned his abstract constructivist work, writing in 1965: ‘Working and living in London since 1933, I never separated my work from my constructivist experiments and I continued to search for new mediums and to use new techniques in painting and sculpture’. Peri joined the Free German League of Culture (FGLC, a politically engaged cultural organisation for German-speaking refugees, founded in Hampstead), and reconnected with his old friend, anti-Nazi photomontagist John Heartfield, participating in the exhibitions The Social Scene (1934) and Artists against Fascism & War (1935) organised by the left-wing Artists International Association (AIA). In 1936–38 he held four solo shows in London and Cambridge. In 1937 the Cement and Concrete Association commissioned a bas-relief panel for their headquarters, showing workmen depicting the whole process of working with concrete. The Association also sponsored Peri's 1938 solo exhibition London Life in Concrete at 36 Soho Square. He became a British citizen in 1939 and lived with his family at 10 Willow Road, Hampstead until 1959. His name remained fluid – as late as 1945 Phillip Henderson referred to him as ‘L. Peri’ (Phillip Henderson, Our Time, 1945), although press reports during the 1940s–50s in Britain generally called him ‘Peter L. Peri’, in reference to his reputation on the continent as Laszlo Peri. As a result, the estate advocated the use of ‘Peter Laszlo Peri’ to unite all aspects of his life and oeuvre. In 1946 he held an exhibition entitled 'Sculpture in Concrete by L. Peri' at the Arcade Gallery, established by Viennese-Jewish art dealer Paul Wengraf (1894–1978).

In 1951 for the Festival of Britain he produced The Sunbathers, which existed in a symbiotic relationship with its environment, the concrete wall functioning as a platform on which he situated his two figures; it has been called 'the apotheosis of this new mode of sculpting: their bodies detached from the wall to an extent conventionally achievable only where figures rest on a horizontal pedestal or platform' (Stryker 2010, p. 38). The sculpture, considered lost until 2016, is now displayed on the balcony above the concourse of London's Waterloo Station. In 1952, Peri held a retrospective exhibition at the Artist’s House in Soho, From Abstract Art to New Realism featuring over 90 works, including concrete reconstructions of his 1920s wooden abstracts. In 1959 he made Man of the World (1959) for Devonshire House, University of Exeter and, in 1960, Coventry's Herbert Art Gallery & Museum opened with Laszlo Peri’s The Coventry Sculpture, made from expanded metal and concrete, as its centrepiece, symbolising the city's concern for art as a means of expression and communication.

Peter Laszlo Peri died in London, England on 19 January 1967. After his death, his widow, Heather, opened his studio to the public, and friends organised a fund-raising exhibition to secure a permanent home for his collection. A joint exhibition, László Moholy-Nagy / Laszlo Peri, was held at the Graphisches Kabinett, Bremen (1987) and a retrospective was held at Leicestershire Museums (1991). In 2018 the Sam Scorer Gallery and Bishop Grosseteste University College in Lincoln, jointly reassessed Laszlo Peri's work, co-curating an exhibition of sculpture and works on paper.

Peter Laszlo Peri's work is represented in UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the British Museum, Leicestershire Education Committee, the London Borough of Camden, the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, and the Tate, as well as numerous collections abroad, among them MoMA, New York; the Pompidou Centre, Paris; the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin and Szepmiviszeti, Budapest.

The artist's grandson is the London-based artist Peter Peri (b. 1971), to whom we are grateful for assistance with this entry.

Related books

Paul Stirton, 'Frederick Antal and Peter Peri: Art, Scholarship and Social Purpose', Visual Culture in Britain, July 2012, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 207-225
Eric Matthew Stryker, 'Peter Peri: Mounting Figures at the Festival', in After the Blitz: Social Space and Figurative art in London, 1945–1962 (PhD Dissertation, Yale University, 2010)
Jutta Vinzent, Identity and Image: Refugee Artists from Nazi Germany in Britain (1933–1945) (Kromsdorf/Weimar: VDG Verlag, 2006)
Margaret Richards, 'Peter Peri', Tribune, Vol. 33, No. 19, 9 May 1969, p. 19
John Berger, 'Impressions of Peter Peri', New Society, 16 May 1968, p. 703
'Mr. Peter Peri. Obituary', The Times, 25 January 1967, p. 12
'Peter Peri's Approach to Sculpture', Official Architecture and Planning, Vol. 25, No. 10, 1 October 1962, p. 654
'Coventry Gallery's Help for Local Artists', The Times, 9 March 1960, p. 4

Public collections

Related organisations

Artists International Association (AIA, exhibitor)
Festival of Britain (exhibitor)
Free German League of Culture (member)

Selected exhibitions

Peter Peri, Sam Scorer Gallery, Lincoln (2018)
The Ben Uri Story: from Art Society to Museum, Ben Uri Gallery & Museum (2001)
Peter Peri Retrospective, Leicestershire Museums (1991)
László Moholy-Nagy / László Péri, Graphisches Kabinett, Bremen (1987)
Peter Peri, Blayden Art Gallery (1975)
Peter Peri, Gardner Centre for the Arts, University of Sussex, Falmer (1973)
Sculpture, Midland Arts Trust, Birmingham (1970)
Peri's People, The Minories, Colchester (1970)
Memorial Exhibition, Swiss Cottage Library (1968)
It’s the People who Matter, Lloyds Gallery, London (1965)
Exhibition of Recent Acquisitions (7th Collection) Friends of the Art Museums of Israel, Ben Uri Gallery (1961)
Peter Peri: Etchings and Sculpture, The Coffee House (1952)
From Abstract Art to New Realism, Artist’s House Gallery (1952)
Sculpture in Relation to Architecture A.A. Bedford Square, London (1952)
People by Peri, Artists International Association Gallery (1948)
Sculpture and Etchings by Peri, Archer Gallery (1947)
Laszlo Peri / Stella Snead, Arcade Gallery (1946)
FGLC and AIA Exhibition of Sculptures and Drawings (1941)
London Life in Concrete, 36 Soho Square (1938)
The New Realism in Sculpture, Gordon Fraser Gallery, Cambridge (1937)
Sculpture, Bloomsbury Gallery, London (1936)
From Constructivism to Realism, Foyle Art Gallery, London (1936)
Artists against Fascism & War, Artists International Association (1935)
The Social Scene, Artists’ International Association (AIA), London (1934)
Moholy-Nagy / Peri, Der Sturm Gallery, Berlin (1921)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Peter Peri]