It’s important to note that Peter, like so many other great expressionists — if one can put him in that classification — learned realism before embarking on a style unique to his own vision. As one world-renowned painter once told me, “you need to learn the real world before you can create your own and have it be believable.”
Peter’s art was groundbreaking. That’s a hard position to be in. When you are the first, you face the doubters, the naysayers and the conservative mindset that makes expressing your love for what you believe in an uphill battle.
In all the biographies that one can read, it’s obvious that Peter’s parents supported his creativity and encouraged it. In a time of war and turmoil, moving from the threat of extermination under the Nazis to Shanghai under the control of the Imperial Japanese army during the brutal days of the Second World War, then to a young State of Israel, surrounded by enemies bent on destroying each and every citizen, Peter had to be aware of the tensions around him. It was probably the love and protection of his parents that made those years not so frightening for him. Throughout it all, there was art in which to immerse himself. Perhaps it was the world that he best knew and it gave him comfort.
With his family moving to Brooklyn, New York in the early 1950s, Peter was now part of a city that celebrated art and gave him many avenues to grow as a professional. His earliest work to gain attention was collages of photographic images, and it won a gold medal from the Society of Illustrators in 1962.