![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/After-the-Bath-1978-Oil-on-canvas-106-x-106-cm-Image-Courtesy-of-the-artist.jpg\")
After the Bath (1978)<\/p>\n After the Bath (1978)<\/p>\n
From the New Mexico desertscape that so inspired Georgia O\u2019Keeffe to the outdoor pleasures of California life that ignited the imagination of a young David Hockney, the intricacies of setting have long impacted the style and sentiment of artists\u2019 work. In the case of Hungarian artist Suzanne Perlman, it is the Caribbean island of Cura\u00e7ao that is evoked through the vivid colour palette of her paintings. The sunglazed idyll in the Dutch Antilles was her home for more than 30 years, the place where she learnt to paint, and where she established herself as an artist. This week, the first ever retrospective of the 95-year-old’s work, opened at the Dutch Centre in London, encompassing more than 70 years and three continents. The survey offers a unique opportunity to discover the extraordinary story behind Perlman’s impressive yet relatively little-known oeuvre and the places that have informed it.<\/span> 1939 was a transformative year for Perlman. Jewish, born and raised in Budapest, at just 16 she had married the Dutch grain importer Henri Perlman, and moved to Rotterdam. Henri was awarded a tender to supply grain to French troops and to finalise the contract the couple were invited to Paris for the weekend. This was May 1940. Three days after they arrived, the Nazi bombardment of Rotterdam began, leaving them stranded in France. The Dutch ambassador advised them to make for one of Holland\u2019s overseas territories, so they ran headlong to the train station. \u201cEverything was out of control,\u201d Perlman recalls. \u201cThere was such an enormous crowd on the platform that the trains simply passed by. My husband saved our lives \u2013 as one train came past he threw our bags through the open window and jumped on with me held under his arm. That got us to Bordeaux.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n But they were not safe yet. More chaos awaited them at the port, with thousands of refugees clamouring to board too few boats. The Perlmans made it aboard one bound for Cura\u00e7ao, but it languished in the port for a week without explanation, until it was discovered that the captain was a Nazi sympathiser waiting for the Germans to take over France. The police ordered him out of Bordeaux, but only just in time. \u201cThe night we left, the French Armistice was signed.\u201d This seismic shift of horizon jump-started a career spanning eight decades, three continents and hundreds of works.\u00a0The nonagenarian still goes to her studio every day, which has moved from the Caribbean, via New York, to settle in London in 1980. The new show, Catching the Ephemeral<\/u>,<\/u>\u00a0<\/strong>at the Dutch Centre, explores Perlman’s practice through a microcosm of 25 pieces that have been grouped according to these different geographical phases: Cura\u00e7ao 1941-71, New York 1970-8, London 2002-18. It is not just physical place that informs her work. In the ‘6os in Salzberg, she worked with the famed Expressionist artist Oskar Kokoschka whose advice \u2013 \u201cThe very first impression of a vision is crucial to retain\u201d \u2013 gives the exhibition its name. Echoes of Kokoschka\u2019s energetic use of colour and vision of movement shimmer through Perlman\u2019s pieces, but ultimately her take on the world is uniquely her own. From her studies under Oskar Kokoschka to her flight from Europe to the Caribbean during WWII, Suzanne Perlman’s life has been as colourful as her striking paintings.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":65329,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11856,139],"tags":[10583,10584,1458,10585],"class_list":["post-65258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sleek-art","category-art","tag-dutch-centre","tag-jewish-art","tag-painting","tag-suzanne-perlman"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\n
\nBeyond the bright hues, there’s a complexity to Perlman\u2019s work that can be traced back to the nature of her arrival on Cura\u00e7ao. \u201cThese were tormented times,\u201d she remembers, with some understatement. Indeed, the artist was not enticed to Cura\u00e7ao on a sanguine search for warmer climes; rather it was the last stop in a dramatic escape from Europe forced by the Nazi invasion of France.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Screen-Shot-2014-07-09-at-4.23.22-PM1-1.png\")
L: Seated Nude (1969); R: Road to Brakkeput (1951)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/IMG_1951.jpg\")
Perlman with her painting of the Government’s House in Cura\u00e7ao<\/p>\n
\nSo Suzanne Perlman, at just 17 years old, left her world behind and sailed across mine infested waters to a new home in the Caribbean and a new vocation. \u201cI began painting in Cura\u00e7ao,\u201d she says. \u201cI was in complete wonder with the nature, the people, the colours and the sunshine of my new home and I had an urgency, a duty to respond to it. The trauma didn\u2019t affect my style of painting but the way I saw the world. I sought to discover a simplicity, an honesty, a fairness in my work.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Abstract-Nude-1973.jpg\")
Abstract Nude (1973)<\/p>\n
\nFor Perlman, moving is at the heart of her identity as a painter. \u201cMy style is constantly evolving,\u201d she says, \u201cwhat you call in Italian\u00a0perpetuum mobile<\/em>, a perpetual motion. I am sure all these different places played a part because you cannot help being influenced by your environment. But you are selective with these influences. You embrace your new culture and you take from it what you appreciate the most and what makes the most sense for you.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Screen-Shot-2014-07-09-at-4.23.22-PM1.png\")
L: Bride and Groom (2008); R: Silvio Tadeus (1975)<\/p>\n
\nIn Perlman\u2019s work resides a complex layering of lightness and infinity, moments caught as they pass and cleaved to a decades of experience and understanding. As her eye moves from nude figures emerging from baths, to solemn couples, to self portraits, to a hectic swirl of humanity enjoying a bank holiday in St James\u2019 Park, what remains consistent is her curiosity, her compassion, her masterful control of colour and emotion.
\n\u201cEvery time, before I pick up the brush to paint I look at the motif as something totally new,\u201d she says. \u201cLike I was blind before and I see it with new eyes. As an artist, the style reveals itself in your work, it cannot be premeditated. I have never painted with any specific tactic or goal. I just paint because I cannot help it.\u201d
\nSuzanne Perlman: Catching the Ephemeral<\/a> is as the Dutch Centre, London until August\u00a031, 2018.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"