A painter, print maker and teacher, Gabor Peterdi is best known for his intaglio prints and engravings although he worked in a variety of media and themes. He made his first color print, Sign of the Lobster, in 1947. One of his early themes was focused on destruction and appeared in his Black Bull series of 1939, which was tied to Surrealism. Expressing his thoughts on this, he said: “All miracles of nature and behind it all the lingering terror of the atomic age—I want to paint all this and say ‘A man was here.’ ” (Baigell 273). Other subjects related to elemental forces of the universe.
He was born in Pestujhely, Hungary and studied at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, the Academy Belle in Rome, and the Academy Julian in Paris. He was associated with the Stanley William Hayter Atelier 17 from 1933 to 1939 in Paris and again in 1947 in New York City. (Hayter, 1901-1988, was a highly influential abstract painter who taught many young modernists at his experimental Atelier 17).
Peterdi arrived in America in 1939. He eventually settled in Rowayton, Connecticut where he taught at the Yale University School of Art, 1960 to 1970s. He also spent time in Hawaii as a teacher at the Honolulu Academy of Art, the Brooklyn Art School (1948-1952), and Hunter College from 1952 to 1959.
Sources include:
Matthew Baigell, Dictionary of American Art
Peter Hastings Falk, Editor, Who Was Who in American Art
