Ivan Peries (31 July 1921 – 13 February 1988) was a founder member of the Colombo '43 Group of Sri Lankan artists, and became one of its leading painters.[1] Born near Colombo, he spent more than half his life in self-imposed exile in London and Southend-On-Sea, but his art remained to the end a prolonged meditation on his native Sri Lankan experience.
Peries' subjects, repeatedly rural life and the ocean shoreline, were of 'a world neither ancient nor modern, clearly recognisable, strangely, hauntingly meaningful and yet ultimately outside the natural experience'.[2] The subject of Ivan Peries' paintings, considered alongside his cultural dislocation, have made him an important post-colonial artist,[3] and a key figure in the origins of contemporary Sri-Lankan art.