Peter Laszlo Péri was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1899, into a large proletarian Jewish family. He began studying fine art, then architecture, in Budapest in 1919. He settled in Berlin in 1920, where he created his first geometric reliefs. In 1922 and 1923 he exhibited with Moholy-Nagy at Der Sturm Galerie in Berlin – the pair were often mentioned as the Hungarian Constructivist duo in Berlin.
In 1933, Péri immigrated to England after his wife, Mary Macnaghten was arrested for possession of Communist propaganda. In Britain, Péri contributed to the constructivist movement by producing irregularly shaped wall reliefs, opening up new planes and discovering concrete as a potential sculptural medium, which he manipulated to great effect. In 1951 he contributed a piece entitled 'The Sunbathers' (formerly thought lost, now restored and on display in Waterloo) to the Festival of Britain and created many public sculptures and reliefs for schools and universities. Peter Laszlo Péri died in London, England on 19 January 1967.
