£250 

Peter Laszlo Peri:
Blitz, 1944
Unmounted (ref: 7950)
Unsigned, etching

Tags: Peter Laszlo Peri etching print men war World War II Paintings by British Artists

Provenance: Private collection

Exhibited:Paul Wengraf’s Arcade Gallery, held jointly with the Surrealist Stella Snead ;WW2 - War Pictures by British Artists, Morley College London, 28 October -23 November 2016, cat 36a.

Literature: WW2 - War Pictures by British Artists, Edited by Sacha Llewellyn & Paul Liss, July 2016, cat 36a, page 74.

Originally issued in a very small edition the  print offered here  is unsigned -  the only other known examples,  in institutional collections such as the Imperial War Museum, are signed. 

Night after night, from September 1940 until May 1941, German bombers attacked British cities, ports and industrial areas. London alone was bombed every day and night, bar one for 11 weeks, destroying one third of the city. In the first 30 days, almost 6,000 people were killed and twice as many badly injured. The most notorious raid took place on Sunday 29 December.

During World War 2 Peri volunteered for air raid rescue services in North London, getting the dead and injured out of bombed premises. He documented much of what he saw in drawings, etchings and sculpture, showing some of these works in his first exhibition after the war at Paul Wengraf’s Arcade Gallery, held jointly with the Surrealist Stella Snead. 

(copyright: The Artist's Estate).

In the mid 1930s Peri became dissatisfied with casting in bronze: it was expensive, and he wanted a more direct working process. Having first cast in concrete in 1920 he now developed a technique for modelling directly in wet concrete using his own formula for what he termed “Pericrete”.

We are grateful to Peter Peri, (grandson of the artist) and Leopold Florescu for assistance.