Exhibition catalog, Nov. 1939

 

...these bulls and rooster, awakened from the peace of my childhood, into the bloody turbulence of life today.    [from the artist's statement in the exhibition catalog (1939
“…these bulls and roosters, awakened from the peace of my childhood, into the bloody turbulence of life today. ” [from the artist’s statement inside the catalog]
Peterdi’s first show in the United States was at Julien Levy Gallery (November 1939) comprising 19 works direct–from–Paris, expressing that ‘bloody turbulence of life today.’

In 1939 Manhattan, neither bloody nor turbulent, newspaper reviewers saw Peterdi as an over-wrought young Surrealist—reminiscent of Soutine, only not as polite.

The Spanish Civil War had already stunned Paris. Refugees were streaming into France, artists were donating work to benefit Spanish orphans, friends were going to Spain to fight; fellow Hungarian Robert Capa was already making war photographs there. Thousands of visitors had seen Picasso’s iconic Guernica at the 1937 Paris World’s Fair.

By 1937–1939, a crescendo of departures from Paris by foreign-born artists had begun in earnest. The family of American sculptor Richard Hollander insisted he come home and were able to accommodate his idea of bringing Gabor Peterdi along as a guest. Their ship arrived in New York harbor mid-August 1939, just two weeks before Hitler would invade Poland.

 notes:
The bombing of Guernica (26 April 1937) was an aerial attack on the Basque town …  carried out at the behest of the Spanish nationalist government by its allies [the German and Italian air forces].  [Wikipedia]

When setting out to revisit Paris in 1936, Julien Levy recalled,  ‘I felt some intimation that Europe was exploding; I thought, well, I will explode with it if it happens. … I sensed that an irreversible process was begun …. To stretch back a hand, to exert some effort, would have no effect upon the inevitable events of the next two years …’
[Memoir of an Art Gallery, originally published New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1977.]



 

 

Watercolor paintings

 

OAHU III.   1968 watercolor on paper [Arches]    26 x 32 in.
OAHU III. 1968
watercolor on paper [Arches]
26 x 32 in.  studio photo
Peterdi has always worked with watercolors, and his retrospectives have usually included some of them. Since watercolor is seldom considered as significant a medium as oils or even prints, it’s less common to find a show devoted to it.

But in 1968, a Peterdi exhibition at the Honolulu Academy of Arts showed only watercolor paintings including OAHU III (above).

Gabor Peterdi’s resplendent watercolor impressions of Hawaii are in the Academy’s upstairs gallery. Their installation without hard-edged traditional mats is a happy one. Line and color now flow easily across the softly irregular edges of hand-pressed paper from one painting to the next. These abstractions of the Islands are excitingly personal, unbrainwashed and unbiased … Though a short-time resident, Peterdi already thinks and feels as a ‘kamaaina’ (‘roots in the soil’). Coming from old lands, he has felt the hard bright newness of this young group of islands … though [the paintings appear] non-objective, their patterns of varied brush-work and colors dancing in inventive textures sing clearly of Hawaii. With every viewing of this show (I’ve been six times and hope to go again before it closes), the vitality of its excitement is always new.

Juliette May Fraser
“Abstractions are Exciting, Personal”
Honolulu Star Bulletin, 26 May 1968



 

 

Massacre of the Innocents

 

MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS.   1954 Etching and engraving, two colors offset from linoleum    16 x 20 in.  Ed. 35    CR# 109 photo: Indianapolis Museum of Art
MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS.   1954
Etching and engraving, two colors offset from linoleum
16 x 20 in.    Ed. 35      CR#109
photo: Indianapolis Museum of Art

Many classical paintings have been created around a biblical narrative known as the  Massacre of the Innocents. Peterdi was familiar with it in works by Rubens, Cranach the Elder, Breugel the Elder, Tintoretto, and Ghirlandaio, to mention a few.

Peterdi’s MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS (1954) is his version—in modern dress. The context is WW II, with aerial bombardment.

As a U.S. soldier at the front, he had survived heavy artillery fire, had seen rotting corpses in battlefields, witnessed the liberation of a Nazi camp. He made drawings of it all, in real-time. Years afterward, he continued to process these images in his paintings and prints.

Ralph E. Shikes wrote,

The theme of Gabor Peterdi’s ‘The Massacre of the Innocents’ is as old as Christian art, the style as young as today, the effect, if studied, as shocking as that of Bruegel’s painting. Bombers attack. Tracer bullets make patterns in the sky. The earth is a shambles of horror, chaos abounds. It is a study in planes, lines, forms—and is a powerful comment. [The Indignant Eye; the Artist as Social Critic in Prints and Drawings from the Fifteenth Century to Picasso (Boston: Beacon Press 1969) p.394]

notes: the title refers to Herod the Great’s order to execute all male children the age of two years or less, in and around Bethlehem; Gospel of Matthew 2:16 [The New English Bible]

To see a partial list of well-known classical images on this theme, try http://www.textweek.com/art/massacre_of_innocents.htm.

 


 

at the Ernst Museum, Budapest

catalog for Peterdi's debut exhibition Ernst Museum, Budapest—October 1930
catalog for Peterdi’s debut exhibition
Ernst Museum, Budapest—October 1930

 

Peterdi Gábor    “ ...   a tiszta tűz bennem maradt” Ernst Museum, Budapest — April 12–May 23, 2007
Peterdi Gábor   “ … a tiszta tűz bennem maradt”
Ernst Museum, Budapest — April 12–May 23, 2007

ERNST MUSEUM Modern and Contemporary Art Gallery then as now located at Nagymező  utca 8, Budapest now under the curatorship of the Hungarian National Gallery
ERNST MUSEUM
Modern and Contemporary Art Gallery
then as now located at Nagymező utca 8, Budapest
now under the curatorship of the Hungarian National Gallery

 

 

In the Arctic

 

ARCTIC BIRD I.   1964 Etching.  Combined technique with cut plates; six colors 36 x 24 in.      Ed. 25            CR #223  photo by Indianapolis Museum of Art
ARCTIC BIRD I.  1964
Combined etching technique; six colors
36 x 24 in.     Ed. 25       CR #223
photo by the Indianapolis Museum of Art

In 1963 [Peterdi] took part in a seminar held at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. From this vantage point he flew over the Arctic regions with one of the indomitable bush pilots. This was an entirely new experience in landscape, where great flat icecaps glistened with a hard blue light and where the only sound was the boom of the ice sheets breaking … More than a year later the colors and mood of the northern landscape began to appear in Peterdi’s paintings and prints. … (Una E. Johnson, Gabor Peterdi: Graphics 1939–1969, Touchstone Publishers, Ltd • New York ©1970)

“In April of 1963, … [he visited] Anchorage, Nome, Kotzebue, and Point Hope with former student Danny Pierce. Over the following two years, he worked on paintings and prints related to his Arctic experience.”  (Wikipedia)