Peter Foldes
Occupation / Title:Animator, Director, Painter, Producer, Writer
Date of birth:22/08/1924
Date of death:29/03/1977
Birthplace:Budapest, Hungary
Biography
Peter Foldes was a Hungarian-British painter, film director, experimental animator, and scriptwriter. He is best known for producing and animating the 1956 painted animated short A Short Vision, an anti-war film that was infamously showed on The Ed Sullivan Show in the same year on May 27, and again on June 10.
Family and early life
Peter was married to Joan Foldes, also born in 1924, whom he met at Courtauld Institute. She was a frequent collaborator, making several animated short films.
Career outline
Peter Foldes moved to London in 1946 to pursue his studies in visual art. While there, he met fellow Hungarian artist John Halas who, alongside Joy Batchelor, is best known for making the 1955 British animated film, Animal Farm, based on George Orwell’s novel of the same name. He encouraged Peter and his wife Joan to make films, resulting several collaborations between the two. After the premiere of A Short Vision, Foldes returned to painting, moving to Paris, France, and also resumed filmmaking. He achieved his greatest success in the mid-1960s.
His works have won awards at Cannes and Venice Film Festivals. He was one of the pioneers in computer animation with his award-winning film Hunger, which was produced with the National Film Board of Canada. Hunger won the Jury Prize in the Short Film category at Cannes Film Festival in the 1973/1974 season.
Personal style
Foldes studied as a painter, so a majority of his films are hand-painted, though he later became a pioneer in computer animation, an early adopter of the tweening method (inbetweening or interpolation for digital animation).
Influences
Foldes was greatly inspired by John Halas to make animated films, and his film career is possibly attributed to him.
References:
“Artists: Peter Foldes.” ArtUK, n.d., https://artuk.org/discover/artists/foldes-peter-19241977.
Beck, Jerry. “‘A Short Vision’ by Joan and Peter Foldes.” Cartoon Brew, June 29, 2011. https://www.cartoonbrew.com/shorts/a-short-vision-by-joan-and-peter-foldes-45369.html.