Background
Peter Lasko was born on March 5, 1924, in Berlin, Germany. He is the son of Leo, who was a director and screenwriter, and Wally Lasko.
London, England, United Kingdom
Peter Lasko attended Saint Martin's School of Art.
Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN, United Kingdom
In 1946 Peter Lasko studied at the Courtauld Institute of Arts.
Peter Lasko, center, with George Zarnecki and G. L. Dodswell and guards on the Dutch-German border. Photo by The Samuel Courtauld Trust
(The magnificent bronze doors of Hildesheim Cathedral, the...)
The magnificent bronze doors of Hildesheim Cathedral, the ivory, gold, enameled, and bejeweled book covers made to contain superbly illuminated manuscripts, the startling reliquary caskets made in the shape of the part of the body supposed to be contained within them - these and other sacred objects were contained within church treasuries and cloisters in the early Middle Ages in Europe. This beautiful book traces the development of these so-called Minor Arts and the major role they played alongside the other pictorial arts and architectural sculpture of the period.
https://www.amazon.com/Ars-Sacra-800-1200-University-Pelican/dp/0300060483/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Ars+Sacra%3A+800-1200&qid=1600257980&s=books&sr=1-1
1972
(This book challenges the commonly held view that Paris is...)
This book challenges the commonly held view that Paris is where Modern Art was created. It refutes the assertion that Picasso and Matisse were the creators of the modern movement, and that it was not in France but in Germany between 1906 and 1914 that artists took the fundamental steps, intellectually as well as artistically, that were to determine the course art was to take for the rest of the century. It was the Russian émigré in Munich, Vassily Kandinsky, who first argued the case for total abstraction in art and for a total right of self-expression. This led directly to non-objective painting, to the nihilism of Dada, and eventually to the post-1945 New York School. The author shows that artists have long gone beyond abstraction in their exploitation of that search for originality, granted to them by the theoretical position taken up in the second decade of the 20th century in Germany.
https://www.amazon.com/Expressionist-Roots-Modernism-Peter-Lasko/dp/0719064104/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=The+Expressionist+Roots+of+Modernism&qid=1600258152&s=books&sr=1-1
2003
Peter Lasko was born on March 5, 1924, in Berlin, Germany. He is the son of Leo, who was a director and screenwriter, and Wally Lasko.
Peter Lasko attended Saint Martin's School of Art. In 1946 he studied at the Courtauld Institute of Arts.
From 1950 to 1965 Peter Lasko worked as assistant keeper of British and medieval antiquities at the British Museum, moving on to academia in 1965 as a professor of fine arts at the University of East Anglia. While there, his interest in medieval metalwork led him to become the general editor of the Pelican History of Art series and to write one of its volumes, Ars Sacra, 800-1200 (1972). While at the university he also helped create a collection of important twentieth-century abstract and constructivist art.
In 1974 Lasko replaced Anthony Blunt, who was discovered to have been a Soviet spy, as director of the Courtauld Institute, where he also became professor of art history. Serving in the directorship until 1985, he made the important contribution of moving the institute to Somerset House, thus making it possible to combine the teaching facilities with world-class art collections for easy study of the important works of Impressionist and post-impressionist masters included in the collection.
After retiring from the Courtauld Institute, Lasko remained active in the art world, and. among other duties, served on the British Museum's board of trustees until 1995, and was the academic governor of Richmond College at the American University of London from 1988 to 2001.
Lasko was also the author of the Kingdom of the Franks: North-West Europe before Charlemagne (1971); at the time of his death he had just completed a book on German Expressionism titled The Expressionist Roots of Modernism and a fictionalized account of the life of twelfth-century goldsmith Roger of Helmarshausen.
(The magnificent bronze doors of Hildesheim Cathedral, the...)
1972(This book challenges the commonly held view that Paris is...)
2003Peter Lasko was a fellow of the British Academy.
In 1948 Peter Lasko married Gwendoline Joan Norman. They had three daughters.