Gabor Peterdi (1915 in Pestújhely, Hungary – 2001 in Stamford,

Connecticut Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...

) was a Hungarian-American painter and printmaker who immigrated to the United States in 1939.Gabor Peterdi: Artwork Search
Smithsonian American Art Museum He enlisted in the US Army and fought in Europe during World War II. He lived and worked primarily in New York and Connecticut, teaching at the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City, United States. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools ...

and

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

in addition to working at his art.

Early life

Gabor Peterdi was born on September 17, 1915 to parents who were poets; they lived in Pestújhely, Hungary, a recently developed northern suburb of Budapest. At the time, this area was still part of the

Austria-Hungary Empire Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe#Before World War I, Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military ...

. He started working in art from an early age and at 15 won a

Prix de Rome The Prix de Rome () or Grand Prix de Rome was a French scholarship for arts students, initially for painters and sculptors, that was established in 1663 during the reign of Louis XIV of France. Winners were awarded a bursary that allowed them t ...

to study painting in Italy. After a year, Peterdi went to Paris, where he studied with the British painter and printmaker

Stanley William Hayter Stanley William Hayter (27 December 1901 – 4 May 1988) was an English painter and master printmaker associated in the 1930s with surrealism and from 1940 onward with abstract expressionism. Regarded as one of the most significant printmakers ...

Atelier 17 Atelier 17 was an art school and studio that was influential in the teaching and promotion of printmaking in the 20th century. Originally located in Paris, the studio relocated to New York City during the years surrounding World War II. It moved ...

."Gabor Peterdi, 85, Artist and Printmaker"
''New York Times,'' 31 August 2001, accessed 27 February 2016 He also studied at the

Académie Julian The () was a private art school for painting and sculpture founded in Paris, France, in 1867 by French painter and teacher Rodolphe Julian (1839–1907). The school was active from 1868 through 1968. It remained famous for the number and qual ...

and the Academie Scandinavien.

Emigration to the US

At about the age of 24, Peterdi emigrated to the United States in 1939, at the time of the beginning of World War II in Europe. He first settled in New York, but joined the Army, serving with the United States in Europe during the war. He established and directed the Graphic Workshop at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. Among his students after World War II was Edmond Casarella, who developed an innovative technique for layering cardboard as a medium to be carved like woodcuts. Peterdi taught at Hunter College (1952–60) and at the

Yale School of Art The Yale School of Art is the art school of Yale University. Founded in 1869 as the first professional fine arts school in the United States, it grants Master of Fine Arts, Masters of Fine Arts degrees to students completing a two-year course in g ...

(1960–87). He was a major influence on younger American printmakers, including Robert Bero and Danny Pierce.

Chuck Close Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealism, photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits ...

served as his assistant while working on his MFA at Yale from 1962 to 1964. He was associated with the New York branch of

. In April 1963, Peterdi traveled to Alaska, lecturing briefly at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and visiting 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. In 1964 he was the recipient of a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

. Through this period when New York was the center of

Abstract Expressionism Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

, Peterdi maintained his interest in and exploration of the natural world in his work. Peterdi died on August 13, 2001, in Stamford, Connecticut. Peterdi's work is held by the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the

Cleveland Museum of Art The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Located in the Wade Park District of University Circle, the museum is internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian art, Asian and Art of anc ...

, the

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...

, the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

, and the

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM; formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's lar ...

, among other institutions."Gabor Peterdi"
Art Encyclopedia

References

External links

images of Peterdi's work
at the Smithsonian American Art Museum {{DEFAULTSORT:Peterdi, Gabor 1915 births 2001 deaths American printmakers Hungarian emigrants to the United States Atelier 17 alumni