Contemporary Artists | Period Artists (A-H) | Period Artists (H-Z)

Elya Peker

Flowers Oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches

Elya is one of the best known contemporary painters of flowers and still lifes in the United States and worldwide. He was born in Moscow in 1937. At the beginning of World War II, his family moved to the city of Gorky.  He lost his father in 1943 and returned with his mother and sister to Moscow after the war. The family was supported by his uncle, who lived in the village of the Pushkin Mountains.

By the age of 11, Elya began taking drawing and painting classes. As a child he liked to visit museums, often visiting the Pushkin Museum and the Tretikoff Gallery. As an adult he traveled and visited the Hermitage, as well as museums in Europe.

In 1951, Elya entered the Moscow Art Institute and studied theatrical set design. One of his teachers was the designer for the Bolshoi Theater. As a graduation project he designed the set for Verdi’s opera Rigoletto, and in 1956 received his diploma. Soon after graduation he began working as a graphic artist for an encyclopedia publisher and continued working there for fifteen years.

Mr. Peker took an extended journey through Europe and visited the Vatican museum, Versailles, the Louvr
e, the Modern Museum in Paris, the villages of Barbizon and Monte Carlo.  He went on to museums in Brussels and Copenhagen, the Rijks museum in Amsterdam, the Van Gogh museum and Rembrandt’s home.

In 1972 Peker came to the United States. He worked as a free lance artist for a design studio and was naturalized in 1980. In 1977 Elya Peker married Katrina Friedman, a medical doctor. They have a son Benjamin, who was born in New York in 1983.  Peker's paintings have been shown extensively at exhibitions in New York, as well Switzerland, China and other countries.

Mr. Peker is continuing the tradition of still life paintings of the 17th c. Dutch and Flemish masters. Peker may rightly be called the first contemporary artist to bring the immediacy and freshness of the twentieth century to his traditional paintings. Collectors of Peker’s works include Joseph A. Brodsky, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature; the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Emil Wolf, Frank L. Angella, and many others.

At present, Elya Peker continues to work; every painting contains the surprise of new flowers and new objects, fresh and unique in its' beauty.