Gabor Peterdi was born September 17, 1915 in Pestújhely, a working-class suburb of Budapest. He grew up as an artistic prodigy encouraged by informal painting lessons at home. His parents, Andor Peterdi and Zseni Várnai, were poets; well-known, respected, and poor. In 1917, the family moved to Budapest; then in 1919, to Rozsadom [ ‘Hill of Roses’] in Buda, overlooking the city. Peterdi later wrote,

I spent ten important years of my life there …  My intimate contact with nature, and our home filled with artworks stimulated me to start painting. Prominent artists, friends of my father, visited often, and gave me art supplies accompanied with casual information. Thus from the age of four until the age of fifteen, when I had my first one-man show, I received my informal art education. 

Among those prominent artists was painter Gyula Rudnay [1878-1957]. Influential mentors were painter Rezső Balint and his art critic brother, Jenő. It was Jenő Balint who wrote the newspaper article that heralded Peterdi’s first show in 1930.

Resző had spent his youth in Paris where he knew Modigliani, Soutine, and others of their circle. He introduced me to avant-garde painting and instilled in me the desire that eventually drove me to Paris.

Peterdi’s academic education was informally grounded in his parents’ library. Often truant at school, by age fourteen he had become something of an auto-didact, reading the great Russian and French authors as well as Shakespeare [in Hungarian translation]. By age 14, he was also reading art history privately in weekly sessions with Dr. Béla Lázár in his Ernst Museum reference library. In order to secure his future, he did study for a short time in the studio of painter Istvan Szőnyi at the Hungarian Academy and joined life drawing classes there. He spent that summer in an artists’ colony in Kecskemét. In October 1930, he exhibited 30 paintings in a one-man show at the Ernst Museum. With special dispensation, he was awarded a studio in the Hungarian Academy in Rome [Prix de Rome]. He left Hungary.