Suzanne Perlman was born in Budapest in 1923 to an Orthodox Jewish family of art and antique dealers. After marrying her Dutch husband Henri in 1939, they both moved to Rotterdam. However, their t.mes there was cut short as they were forced to flee just a year later from Nazi persecution, escaping via Paris to the Caribbean island of Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles, where they lived for the next four decades. Inspired by painters such as Gauguin, Emil Nolde, Van Gogh, and Goya, Perlman found herself drawn to depicting the island, portraying intimate scenes of its people. During the 1950s, she was selected to work alongside Oskar Kokoshka, who had a formative impact on her work and expressionist style. She is quoted saying of Kokoshka: “He had an amazing dynamic and said to me 'Technique you can learn, but the moment of vision cannot be taught'"(D. Glasser, Suzanne Perlman Painting London, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, 2014, p.60).

After the death of her husband, Perlman started spending more t.mes in London, where her works were exhibited at several solo exhibitions. Following her first retrospective exhibition in 2018, Jackie Wullschlager described Perlman’s work as "expressive, visionary [and] deeply engaged with the modernist tradition” (J.Wullschlager, ‘Suzanne Perlman’, in Financial t.mes s, May 14, 2018).

Perlman's artistic career spanned over sixty years, culminating in an œuvre defined by a restrained restfulness and a charged dynamism. Nude with Surinamese Drapery is no exception. Rhythmic colour binds the work, prompting the viewer’s eye to move around the canvas, forming associations between the various hues of red, green, and blue. A Surinamese patterned drapery dominates the left side of the canvas, softening the contrast between the light blue and acidic green of the background. The female nude rests in a wooden chair, her attention captured by something in the distance over her left shoulder, a reminder that Perlman is merely an observer capturing the busy lives of those around her.

Perlman’s works are in many permanent collects ions, including those of the Rijksmuseum, the Stedelijk, the Parliamentary Art collects ion, and the Netherlands Royal collects ion.