While I also make abstract and autobiographical works, my principal interest is political art. Having spent my childhood under a fascist regime, my teen years under Soviet occupation and my adulthood in America, I have a deep understanding of the extremes of societal conflict. My art is based on such conflicts, principally depicting the struggle between western civilization and its various detractors; these can be anarchy, nihilism, or external and internal foes. The work can be interpreted from an ecological viewpoint as well, wherein the struggle is between civilization and the natural responses of a wounded and exploited earth.
My vocabulary is to represent civilization by abstracted, but obviously man-made constructs such as stylized buildings or machines and, frequently, simple non-representational objects. The adversary is a variety of alien-appearing plant forms, ranging from repulsive to beautiful. In some pieces civilization is so solid that its attacker can only probe and explore, but cannot inflict damage. In others, it is capable of eroding, cutting into or entering whatever represents the advanced world.
The majority of the works are welded steel, some with brass and copper parts or machined aluminum. I make a concerted effort to produce the pieces so that they are fully executed sculptural objects that can be valued devoid of their narrative.
I am a self-taught, but by no means naïve artist, basing my aesthetic on decades of studying and collecting art (Chicago Imagists and Haitian art). I have had an extended career as a scientist as the John Evans Professor of Neuroscience at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois until my retirement in 2012, I am now a full-time sculptor.

Narrative Art of Peter Dallos by Peter Dallos

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