Biography
Gábor Peterdi was a Hungarian-American painter. His first masters were Gyula Rudnay, Nándor Katona and Rezső Bálint. In the summer of 1929, he worked at the Kecskemét Artists' Colony and studied for a short time in the studio of István Szőnyi. The director of the Ernst Museum invited him to a solo exhibition at the age of 15. He then studied further in Rome at the Accademia de Belle Arti on a scholarship, and received the Prix de Rome for his paintings. In 1932, he moved to Paris, where he was recommended by Viera da Silva and Árpád Szenes to the studio of S. W. Hayter Ateliers 17. He entered Parisian social life, met Chagall, Miró, Alexander Calder, Giacometti and Max Ernst. Initially, he painted post-impressionist and expressionist pictures, and then in 1938 he appeared in Jeanne Bucher's gallery with abstract works. His murals, created together with Jean Lurçat, won an award at the 1937 Paris World Exhibition. He emigrated to the United States in 1939.
He fought in World War II, the Normandy landings, and the horrific sight of concentration camps haunted his drawings and engravings for a long time as themes. He taught printmaking at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in New York from 1948 to 1952, at Hunter College from 1952 to 1960, and at Yale University from 1960 to 1987. His book Printmaking: Methods Old and New is used as a fine arts textbook. He had around two hundred solo exhibitions in the USA. His oil paintings, watercolors, black-and-white and color, usually large-scale engravings, oscillate between realism and abstraction, process the scenery of the countryside and nature.
