About this Event
Join us for a live discussion and curatorial tour of This Was Tomorrow, exploring how five artists, architects and designers helped shape modern Britain—and how their lives and ideas connected in London.
Bringing together original works across art, architecture, photography and design, the exhibition traces the intersecting paths of Peter László Peri, Ernő Goldfinger, Marcel Breuer, László Moholy-Nagy and György Kepes. All five were of Jewish heritage and arrived in Britain in the 1930s, amid persecution and political upheaval in Europe. Here, friendships, collaborations and creative exchanges opened up new possibilities for their work.
From Breuer’s Isokon furniture and Goldfinger’s postwar architecture to experimental film, graphic design, Moholy-Nagy’s photography, Kepes’ original photograms and Peri’s concrete sculpture, This Was Tomorrow brings celebrated projects into conversation with lesser-known experiments. Together, they reveal modernism as a meeting of disciplines, people and ideas.
Opening Night Programme
7 PM: Making Tomorrow – Five Hungarian Modernists and Their London Networks
With Magnus Englund, Márton Orosz, Pippa Goldfinger and Peter Peri, chaired by Lilla Farkas, cultural attaché at Liszt Institute London
8PM: Guided tour
With curator Sarah MacDougall
Speakers
Pippa Goldfinger is Head of Design at Design West in Bristol where she oversees Design Review in the region, programmes and hosts talks and events and fundraises for the award winning education programme Shape My City.
Pippa is the granddaughter of the Hungarian Architect Erno Goldfinger and spent the weekends of her formative years with Erno & Ursula at their home in Hampstead, 2 Willow Road. She was 21 years old when Erno died and he had a strong influence on her life. Pippa oversees the RIBA Goldfinger Bursary, established by her aunt Liz Goldfinger, for architecture students from diverse backgrounds.
Peter Peri reinterprets the historical avant-gardes from a contemporary perspective, with a prime focus on the traditions of the Eastern European avant-garde. Peri’s projects are research-driven and critically oriented, and his work can be found in the collections of Tate, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Saatchi Gallery.
Peri's work has a personal connection to Modernism. His grandfather was László Péri (1899–1967), a Hungarian émigré to Britain who was involved in Constructivism before turning to architecture and later in his life to Realism.
Magnus Englund co-founded the interior design retailer Skandium and is now Director of the Isokon Gallery museum and a trustee of the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation. He has written half a dozen books on architecture and design, and has lectured extensively on the Bauhaus in Britain and the connection between Isokon, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy.
Márton Orosz is an art historian, curator, and filmmaker. He founded the Photography and Media Arts Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts – Hungarian National Gallery and serves as Director of the Vasarely Museum in Budapest. His scholarly and curatorial work focuses on light-based media, avant-garde collecting, abstract-geometric and kinetic art, computer-generated imagery, and moving images. He is also Co-President of the International Kepes Society (IKS), an international organisation fostering dialogue at the intersection of art, science, and technology.
Supporters and acknowledgements
- Curator: Sarah MacDougall
- Visuals: Kinara Pegorini
- Exhibition Lead: Lilla Farkas
This event is supported by the Hungarian Academy of Arts and the National Cultural Fund of Hungary.
Institutional Partners:
- Isokon Gallery
- Dobó István Castle Museum, Eger
- Moholy-Nagy Foundation
- Pritchard Papers – University of East Anglia
- Architectural Association Archives
- London Transport Museum
Special thanks to Márton Orosz, Peter Peri, Pippa Goldfinger, Magnus Englund and Juliet Kepes-Stone for their advisory.
Event venue & nearby stays
Liszt Institute London, 17-19 Cockspur Street, London, United Kingdom
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