About the artwork

Screenprint made by Peter László Péri in 1923 for the Great Berlin Art Exhibition. It represents three large space constructions. This print features in major art collections, including Tate, Centre Pompidou and MoMA NYC amongst others. The edition is not numbered but MoMA estimates it is an edition of approximately 100.

In 1923 within the Great Berlin Art Exhibition’s Novembergruppe section Péri exhibited 3 radically minimal and large wooden cut-outs in red and black. This 3 part Space Construction is annotated by Peri as being 17 metres long and 7 meters high but was in this incarnation probably the same scale as Lissitzky’s Proun Room, which was in the neighbouring booth. Peri later wrote that this exhibit marked the culmination and end of his Abstract work and that “further experiments in this direction would have resulted in the total destruction of form”.

- László Péri estate

Artist: Peter László Péri

Date: 1923 (erroneously dated 1924)

Framed size: 42cm x 55cm

Mounting: Conservation float-mounted

Framing: Museum-grade hand-polished walnut frame with 99% UV-resistant glass

Delivery: Collect from the shop or contact Cal to arrange specialist art handlers.

About the artist

Peter László Péri (1899 – 1967) was a Hungarian artist and sculptor renowned for his constructivist artworks in the 1920s. He was involved in the Hungarian avant-garde from an early age, joining Janos Macza’s innovative theatre workshop in 1917. After moving to and being expelled from Paris for sedition, he settled in Berlin, becoming close with a group of exiled left-wing Hungarian avant-garde artists. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Péri held two exhibitions in 1922 and 1923 at Herwarth Walden’s Der Sturm Gallery. An émigré to England in 1933 from Nazi-occupied Germany, Péri worked more figuratively after the war.

Two of his sculptural relief works are on display at Tate Britain in the Historic and Modern British Art section 1920-1940, and several of his works are in MoMA. His long-lost Festival of Britain sculpture 'The Sunbathers' was recently restored and installed at Waterloo Station. A new exhibition celebrating Péri's work from the period after he emigrated has just opened in Berlin at Kunsthaus Dahlem.