Ephraim
Peleg was born Ferdynand Verderber in Krakow, Poland in 1936.
A survivor of the Holocaust, Peleg was sent to Israel when he
was nine years old with his brother after learning that both parents
were killed in the concentration camps. In Israel he studied at
the Avni Institute of Art and privately with well known artists
such as Marcel Janko, Josef Zaritzky, Chaim Kive, and Ernst Fuchs.
Later, while living in Jerusalem, he worked as an assistant instructor
of sculpture at the Bezalel Academy of Art, organized the after
school art program for the entire city, and taught art for UNESCO.
Peleg
came to the United States when he was commissioned to create a
large scale interactive sculpture for Cedar Crest College in Allentown,
Pennsylvania in 1978. Since then, he has created outdoor sculptures
for Lehigh University, Temple University, University of Pennsylvania,
and B'nai B'rith House. He has participated in major invitational
outdoor exhibits such as Chesterwood (Massachusetts) and Cheltenham
(Pennsylvania) and has exhibited broadly throughout Israel, Europe,
and the United States in museums and galleries in one man and
group shows.
Peleg's
large and small scale sculptures for private and public collections
are fabricated from metal, wood, stone, and other media. As a
result of his lost childhood and the loss of his son, Avihu in
the War in Lebanon in 1982, he often relies on powerful forms
and vibrant primary colors that appeal to children and the creative
spirit in all of us; this is especially true of his kinetic wall
paintings that allow viewers to interact with the work by moving
pieces and changing compositions.
