Peter Esdaile

Peter Esdaile (born 20 October 1947) is a Norwegian painter, sculptor, and printmaker born in Canada. Esdaile was educated in the period 1966–1973 at the National Academy of Craft and Art Industry, and at the National Academy of Fine Arts where he received his MFA. He studied under Chrix Dahl, Åge Storstein, Ludvig Eikaas, Halvdan Ljøsne, and Arne Malmedal. While Esdaile's early works were more political in nature, his later works have evolved to become a fusion of surrealism and expressionism. Esdaile's works are informed by Western and Oriental philosophy and have been influenced by Francis Bacon, David Hockney, Piet Mondrian, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Anselm Kiefer, Alberto Giacometti, Knut Rose and Jens Johanessen. Background Born in Montréal in the region of Quebec in Canada on 20 October 1947, Esdaile was the first child of Robert Clarke Esdaile (1918–1987) a Canadian-born architect, and Elin Høst (1920–1983) a Norwegian teacher, recipient of an UNESCO Award for her work with preschool children, and daughter of Herman Fleischer Høst. The couple met in Sweden after the Second World War and married in 1947. They relocated to Montréal where Robert lectured in design at the School of Architecture at McGill University. In 1949 the family moved with two-year-old Peter to Norway. As an architect, working for Bærum Municipality, Robert designed numerous projects building private residences and condominiums in Bærum, and was a major figure in the early modernist movement that reshaped the landscape of Norwegian architecture in the 1950s-1970s. He played an influential role in popularising Le Corbusier's movement of functionalist modern architecture and urban planning. In addition to this, Robert also lectured at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design between 1965 and 1971. He was often featured in editorials concerning urban planning in the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet. He would later move on to serve as a professor at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim, in 1971.