The Sunbathers

...Festival Hall, Southbank

...Born in Budapest at the turn of the century, Laszlo Peri spent the formative years of his career in Germany, before emigrating to Britain in 1933, becoming a British citizen six years later. A trained architect, Laszlo Peri pioneered the use of concrete as a material for sculpture, initially through building reliefs, including a series of commissions for Lambeth County Council in the late 1940s.


The Sunbathers was Laszlo Peri’s first sculptural commission, for which he chose to use his own adapted form of concrete, a colourised version which he’d dubbed Peri-crete. Depicting relaxed male and female characters, the sculpture’s prominent position ensured it made a lasting impression on visitors, including the poet Dylan Thomas, who referenced the sculpture in his essay on the Festival.