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László Mészáros was one of the most bellicose original talents of Hungarian sculpture between the two world wars. He was a poor artist, who first exhibited in 1928. As an active communist he emigrated in 1935 to the Soviet Union. His work was carried out in hardship and struggle far from home, yet his oeuvre is well known in Hungary.
Peasant Boy is one of the outstanding pieces of the Hungarian National Gallery. He modelled this marvellous sculptural symbol of the poor peasantry in 1930. The figure represents the defrauded, humiliated peasants, who were beginning to become more class-conscious and revolutionary. The statue is free from the false or romantic approach of genre portraits, it is full of revolutionary spirit.
The simple forms of the statue are full of life. The boy is wearing peasant pantaloons, and is naked to the waist. Mészáros deliberately used this garment as it was the symbol of the peasant way of life and was often used in trashy folk representations. The seemingly quiet figure is bursting with drama and tension. It was cast from the plaster model bought from the artist in 1932.
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