Selected Works - Eve Peri (1897-1966) - Artists

Eve Peri, born in Bangor, Maine, worked predominantly in New York during the 1930s and 1940s as an abstract fiber collage artist. Inspired by the rich patterns and organic forms inherent to fiber and modernist art, Peri cut and assembled found textiles gathered from travels around the world and applied needlework to highlight a pattern or to secure a fabric form to the canvas. For Peri, the textile whether a hem from a friend’s garment or a found scrap of antique silk, served as both her subject matter and the means of her expression. Peri, at a very young age, learned embroidery, appliqué, stitching and quiltmaking techniques from her mother and aunts. As an artist working exclusively with these skills and as a designer with her second husband, Alfonso Umana Mendez, producing hand woven fabrics for interiors, theater and fashion, she

understood and elevated the value of hand worked objects in a machine age. Peri, like other female artists working with similar materials, was restricted by the classification of her work as either “traditional woman’s work” or “craft”. In 1937, the Delphic Gallery, New York held her first solo exhibition and subsequent group exhibitions followed including “ Contemporary Decorative Art”, The Toledo Museum of Art, (1939), “Miscellaneous Textiles”, Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA (1948) and “Wall Hangings and Rugs”, The Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York (1957). Most recently, her work was on view in 1991 at the Comfort Gallery, Haverford College, PA.

SELECTED MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA
Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery, The University of Maryland Baltimore County, MD
American Craft Museum, New York, NY
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME
Comfort Gallery, Haverford College, Haverford, PA
Cooper Hewitt Museum, New York, NY
The Cooper Union, New York, NY
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
The Women’s Museum, Washington, DC
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT

1951
American Institute of Decorators, Citation of Merit

1952
Women in Art, Houston, TX

Eve Peri (1897-1966)

Exhibitions

Prints & Publications

Artist Information