Object Description
A fascinating sculpture, full of life and detail. Three metal rods support eight discs on which groups of figures climb and support each other. The whole structure forms a spiral and, like Peri’s “Coventry Sculpture” at the Herbert Museum, it echoes aspects of Tatlin’s tower.
Date: 1960
Dimensions: 87 x 77cm in diameter
Medium: resin and metal
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Peter László Péri (1899 – 1967) was a Hungarian artist and sculptor renowned for his constructivist artworks in the 1920s. He was involved in the Hungarian avant-garde from an early age, joining Janos Macza’s innovative theatre workshop in 1917. After moving to and being expelled from Paris for sedition, he settled in Berlin, becoming close with a group of exiled left-wing Hungarian avant-garde artists. An émigré to England in 1933 from Nazi-occupied Germany, Péri worked more figuratively after the war.
Two of his sculptural relief works are on display at Tate Britain in the Historic and Modern British Art section 1920-1940, and several of his works are in MoMA. His long-lost Festival of Britain sculpture ‘The Sunbathers’ was recently restored and installed at Waterloo Station. A new exhibition celebrating Péri’s work from the period after he emigrated has just opened in Berlin at Kunsthaus Dahlem. The collection that we have for sale is largely from this period of his life.