Surface And Beneath

Peter Panyoczki was born in 1953 in Budapest and emigrated with his parents to Zurich. After study and work stays in cities
such as Rotterdam, Florence and Barcelona, he has been living for the past 25 years in both Switzerland and New Zealand.

Peter’s paintings and sculptures are a record of his intellectual and physical wanderings around our planet, connecting his native
Europeto our island home in the South Pacific. He is both exile and supreme connector, an innovator, yet also the inheritor of memories.
His magyar ancestors journeyed from Siberia to present day Hungary, carrying with them a distinctive language and culture.

Their migrations inspired awe and fear in the Western European mind in the guise of Atilla the Hunn.
The name “Panyoczki” reflects migrations of Slavs to the heart of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire. Peter, however, also carries
the trauma of his own exile with his parents from his native Hungary to the Sanctuary of Switzerland, when in 1956 Russian tanks
rolled into Budapest to crush the Hungarian Uprising.

Photo courtesy of TAKSU