Ivan PERIES (1921- 1988)

Ivan Peries produced a body of work over fifty years of energetic activity that makes a significant artistic statement and a distinctive contribution to modern art in Asia. He was a founder member of the ’43 Group of Sri Lanka. His varied and prolific landscapes, portraits and religious scenes in earthy shades reflect the tranquility that the artist aspired for in his reality.

Professor Senake Bandaranayake notes that, “Peries always paid meticulous attention to the technical qualities of his work. He constantly experimented with new methods and invented new techniques for himself….Sometimes he combines the two styles…These variations are in fact two sides of his personality and the great effort he made throughout his life to bring these conflicting states under control, most profoundly through his art, but also in his life…”

“Peries' pictures are quite static, whatever movement there is, is entirely internal, underneath, and the gestures of a kind of inner spirit of space. This spirit, sometimes highly charged, dramatic, even violent, sometimes quiet, gentle, delicate, almost musical, often (in the best pictures) both things at once, is the most profound thing that these paintings have to offer us...

From the beginning he displays a wide range of interest and a variety of mood and manner. Yet this variety is always characterised by his distinctive style, that mark of a natural talent, evolving, developing through the years, but containing in his latest phases elements present in its genesis. The figures are not much more than objects for particular arrangements of form and colour so much more that in the later pictures the figures are often faceless, robed silhouettes rather than identifiable people. The fineness of the artist's perception has captured much more than the merely formal qualities of the subject.” Senake Bandaranayake, from the Catalogue '43 Group Exhibition Royal Festival Hall, London, 1987.

Ivan Peries exhibited his works throughout Europe and in Sri Lanka, until his death in 1988. His paintings were exhibited posthumously at the Hayward Gallery, South Bank, London in 1989 and are included in many permanent collections including those of the Petit Palais, Paris, the Lionel Wendt Collection, Sri Lanka, and the Imperial War Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Some literature on Ivan Peries:

43 Group, A Chronicle of Fifty Years on the Art of Sri Lanka, by Neville Weereratne, 1993.
M. Ivan Peries Paintings 1938-88, S. Bandaranayake and M. Fonseka, Colombo 1996.

Request for more information.

© The Private Gallery 2006.