A powerful homage to the violence inherent to nature’s survival as well as a window onto Peterdi’s profound skill, “Hunter Hunted'' is an image that invites the viewer to look, and look again. A horse and rider are set upon by beasts of an unknown species, each figure twisted and straining in a battle of wills. Peterdi angles his engraved lines with an untethered energy that somehow remains machine-precise, each straining muscle, hair, and tooth as finely wrought and visceral as a freshly sharpened knife.
While hardly an early-career image for the artist, whose professional path began at age fifteen in 1930, it is nonetheless exemplary of the first chapter in his ever evolving style. “Hunter Hunted” displays the heavy hitting influences of the time - Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism - as well as Peterdi’s time spent over a decade earlier at the experimental printmaking workshop led by Stanley William Hayter, Atelier 17. But more significantly, it showcases the singular imagination of Peterdi himself, one which influenced countless peers and students in the years to come.