Hawai’i

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

HALEAKALA. 1973 Relief etching on zinc; surface and intaglio color 24 x 36 in. Ed. 100, AP 10, HC 7 CR#337 — HALEAKALA. 1973
Relief etching on zinc; surface and intaglio color
24 x 36 in. Ed. 100, AP 10, HC 7 CR#337

Often mistaken for a painting, HALEAKALA is a print. Impressions of it occasionally turn up with margins concealed or completely cut away (as shown here). Its size [2 x 3 feet] may also suggest displaying it as if it were a painting.

The ‘painterly quality’ of the image has been achieved with standard printmaking technique. The vivid color and organic shapes reflect Peterdi’s actual experience of Haleakala Crater during his second artist residency in Hawai’i. One of his students with an appropriately rugged vehicle drove him up the steep and winding road to the very peak [est. 10,000 ft. or more] by which time a strong, cold windstorm was blasting through. “The volcano was not active—but the colors were,” he replied in a letter to Jane Haslem, who had asked him about it. “The ash in the crater was an array of the most gorgeous colors—red, purple, violet …”

Whether creating a painting or a print, Peterdi would have first dreamed it, his dream revealing the intended image as well as the method for achieving it.

“Some things I can do only as a painting; for other things, I must make a print,” he used to say. “In the same way a bird needs two wings to fly, both are equally necessary for me.”

note: Haleakala [‘House of the Sun’] is a massive shield volcano
that forms more than 75% of the Hawaiian Island of Maui.
[Wikipedia]

Gabor Peterdi

Watercolor paintings

Peterdi color prints