IVAN PERIES

Untitled
Dated and signed 'Ivan Peries 1967' (Upper left)
Watercolour on Paper
9.8in x 6.7in (25cm x 17cm)
Painted in 1967
Provenance
Gifted to Ms Sunethra Bandaranaike
by Professor Senaka Bandaranaike, 1990
Ivan Peries was a founding member of the Colombo '43 Group of Sri Lankan artists, and became one of its leading painters. Born near Colombo, he spent more than half his life in self-imposed exile in London and Southend-On-Sea, but his art remained to the end a prolonged meditation on his native Sri Lankan experience.
Ivan Peries belonged to a community of progressive, intellectual Sri Lankan artists. This group included Justin Pieris Deraniyagala, George Keyt, Aubrey Colette, George Claessen, WJG Beling, LTP Manjusri, Richard Gabriel, Walter Witharne and YJ Thuring.
The subject of Ivan Peries' paintings, considered alongside his cultural dislocation, have made him an important post-colonial artist, and a key figure in the origins of contemporary Sri Lankan art.