Peri’s first known studio address is mentioned in a postcard dated 1924 as Atelier 4, 52 Motzstrasse, Berlin. Motzstrasse was home in the 1920s to Expressionist poet and wife of Herwath Walden (Peri’s first gallerist at Der Sturm) Else Lasker-Schuler. Stephen Spender, who Peri would come to know later in Britain through the Artist’s International Association, also stayed on the street. By 1928 Peri was using a room high up in an office block on Potsdamer Strasse to live and work. After the family left Germany in 1933 they lived briefly in London’s Ladbroke Grove before moving to 10 Willow Road, Hampstead. There Peri used the spare room to work until, in 1937, he found a permanent studio in Camden Street, where he would remain until the studios were demolished in 1965. New studios were built on the same site by Camden Council, largely thanks to Peri’s campaigning. The artist tenants of the studios were filmed prior to the demolition in a 1965 BBC documentary directed by David Gladwell titled 28B Camden Street. Peri worked in Camden Town for 30 years until his death in 1967, daily life on the streets in this part of North London forms the abiding subject of his post war work.

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