Ceramists Contemporary art
Yō Akiyama (秋山 陽) is a Japanese ceramicist based in Kyoto. He was a late leading figure of Sōdeisha, a twentieth-century avant-garde artist group that sought to redefine understandings of aesthetics and purpose in modern and contemporary ceramics, focusing on sculptural attributes over strict functionality. Akiyama studied directly under Kazuo Yagi, one of the founders of Sōdeisha, for six years. Akiyama later became a professor at Kyoto Municipal University of Arts and Music, where he is currently a Professor Emeritus, having retired in 2018. As an artist, he works primarily with black pottery, a technique that fires clay in low temp, smoky conditions to create a dark effect. His predominantly largescale work is richly textural and abstract, emphasizing the earthy materiality of the work as well as its form.
Frederico Aguilar Alcuaz is a Filipino abstract painter, sculptor and ceramist, and master tapestry artist.
He studied painting at the University of the Philippines' School of Fine Arts, then lived and worked both in the Philippines and Spain, and in Brno, Czech Republic, he worked extensively on tapestries.
Alcuaz has earned international acclaim with his vivid abstract works in various genres and techniques, and he has exhibited extensively internationally.
Elfriede Balzar-Kopp is a German ceramic artist.
She trained at the state ceramics engineering workshop in Höhr, worked in Karlsruhe at the State Maiolica Manufactory, and founded her own pottery workshop in Höhr in 1927.
Elfriede Balzar-Kopp initially focused on local Baroque vessels in her work and combined them with other styles. Her unique ceramic animal figurines, jugs, and genre scenes are sought after by collectors, and many of the objects she created adorn galleries around the world. Her son Heiner Balzar (born 1937) is one of the outstanding ceramic artists of the second half of the 20th century.
André Borderie is a French artist and sculptor.
Classically trained as a technician and working as a civil servant in the telecommunications sector, André Bordari met the poster artist Paul Colin in 1942, who encouraged him to take up painting.
A fateful meeting with the Austrian sculptors Vera and Pierre Sekely in 1946 led Bordari to the decision to devote himself entirely to art.
André Borderi is known for his paintings, tapestries and ceramics.
William Merric Boyd, known more as Merric Boyd, was an Australian artist, active as a ceramicist, sculptor, and extensive chronicling of his family and environs in pencil drawing.
Boyd established a studio workshop at Murrumbeena and pottery kilns were established there in 1911 with the support of his family. He studied under Bernard Hall and Frederick McCubbin at the National Gallery School and where he took up ceramics as a path to sculpture, but settled on pottery as his medium. He held his first exhibition of stoneware in Melbourne in 1912 and his second exhibition at Besant Lodge soon afterwards.
Boyd's best works were produced between 1920 and 1930; mostly pieces for domestic use, often decorated by his wife Doris, and some pottery sculptures. He and Doris often used Australian flora and fauna as decorative motifs.
Peter Brandes is a Danish painter, sculptor, ceramic artist and photographer.
Brandes' art is abstract and often in brown colours. He had his breakthrough as artist in the beginning of the 1980s. He has, inter alia, done artwork on Roskilde Domkirke and mosaic (colored glass) windows in a church at Nordkap and the church Village of Hope, south of Los Angeles. In 1998, he created the enormous Roskilde Jars which stand outside the main Roskilde Railway Station.
Brandes is self-taught and his art circles around themes from Christianity. Ancient Greek mythology has also inspired his art. Brandes has illustrated a number of books, for example Homer’s Iliad. A great part of Brandes' ceramic works are inspired by ancient Greek art and mythology.
Roger Capron, birth name Roger Henri Louis Capron, is a French ceramic sculptor and draftsman.
Capron studied applied arts in Paris and in 1946 founded a pottery workshop, l'Atelier Callis, in Vallauris, employing up to 120 people at various times. Capron won many awards, including the Grand Prix International de la Céramique in 1970, and in 1983 he founded the now famous Atelier Capron.
Roger Capron's creations often use clay tiles or enameled lava tiles, traditionally used for decorative panels. This recognizable way of using ceramics in furniture and objects has become the designer's trademark. Capron was the first to put his ceramic expertise at the service of semi-industrial production. The workshop developed into a small factory and gained an international reputation.
Andrea Cascella was an Italian painter and sculptor, a member of the Cascella dynasty of artists.
During World War II he was an active member of the Resistance in the Garibaldi Ossola formations as a training commander. Andrea Cascella also participated in the meetings of artists, directors, screenwriters, writers and poets of the 1940s-70s Menghi Osteria Brothers.
One of his most beautiful works is considered to be the monument to the fallen at Auschwitz, which he designed with his brother Pietro. Cascella also created sculptures for churches and bas-reliefs for public buildings.
Mario Ceroli is an Italian sculptor. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, Mississippi. One of his sculptures is on the Luigi Einaudi campus of the University of Turin, and another one is at the Vatican Museums.
Hans Coper was an influential German-born British studio potter. His work is often coupled with that of Lucie Rie due to their close association, even though their best known work differs dramatically, with Rie's being less sculptural, while Coper's was much more abstract, but also always functional.
Dieter Crumbiegel is a German painter-painter and ceramist.
He studied ceramics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kassel and opened his own studio in Fulda in 1964. Dieter Crumbiegel's paintings, on the other hand, convey messages that are only revealed to him while he is painting. These works have no titles; instead, they are assigned an ordinal number.
Since 1961, Crumbiegel's works have been widely exhibited both in Germany and abroad, in Australia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Spain and Taiwan.
Hanna Dąbkowska-Skriabin is a Polish artist.
She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in the Department of Painting.
Hanna was very concerned about the fate of the human race, which is ruining itself with greed and short-sightedness. This is reflected in the works of the artist: many of her paintings are a timeless vision of a harsh world dominated by suffering and injustice. As if to protest against all this evil, Hanna Dąbkowska-Skriabin painted both paintings about love and beautiful landscapes. She is best known for her oil paintings. She has also mastered the techniques of ceramics and tapestry.
Juan Manuel de la Rosa is a painter, engraver, and ceramicist known for his works on handmade paper. He studied lesser-known techniques for painting and papermaking from Japan, Egypt, Fiyi and France; his handmade paper is typically made of linen, cotton, or hemp. With these traditional approaches, he creates layers and adds new dimensions to his artworks.
Edmund Arthur Lowndes de Waal is a contemporary English artist, master potter and author. He is known for his large-scale installations of porcelain vessels often created in response to collections and archives or the history of a particular place. De Waal's book The Hare with Amber Eyes was awarded the Costa Book Award for Biography, Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize in 2011 and Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for Non-Fiction in 2015. De Waal's second book The White Road, tracing his journey to discover the history of porcelain was released in 2015.
Klaus Eberlein was a German graphic artist, illustrator and ceramic sculptor. He initially completed training as a chromolithographer. From 1962 to 1968 he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, and from 1968 he was a master student of Hermann Kaspar, receiving a final diploma from the academy. Eberlein was a member of the Association for Original Etching, the Dachau Artists' Association and the Munich Artists' Association. In 2013 he was accepted into the South German literary association Münchner Turmschreiber.
Pierrette Favarger was a Swiss artist, renowned for her unique approach to ceramics and sculpture. Born in 1924, Favarger's work is distinguished by her refusal to use fire for baking her creations. This unusual technique allowed her to incorporate materials like textiles, feathers, fur, and even nails into her clay work, which could not withstand high temperatures. Her style, focusing on terracotta and the human figure, stood apart from contemporary trends, defying modern labels.
Throughout her career, Favarger participated in significant collective exhibitions, such as the one in Faenza in 1984, Zürich's Heimatwerk in 1986, and China in 1987. Additionally, her works were showcased in numerous solo exhibitions, including those at the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Neuchâtel in 1975 and 1999, and the Galerie Ditesheim in 1982 and 1990. Her distinctive work was again exhibited in 2020 at the Musée Ariana in the "Anatomie fragmentée" exhibition alongside pieces by Jean-Marie Borgeaud, Paul March, and Patriciu Mateescu.
Pierrette Favarger's career, marked by her innovative approach to ceramics, made a significant impact in the art world. Her works, which often challenged conventional ceramic techniques, are a testament to her creative spirit and technical mastery.
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Salvatore Fiume is an Italian artist known for his diverse talents including painting, sculpture, ceramics and graphic design.
Salvatore Fiume's artistic style has evolved throughout his career, reflecting various influences. Fiume's paintings are characterised by vivid colours, dynamic brushwork and a sense of emotional intensity. He was also a skilled sculptor and created many sculptures in different materials.
Tsugouharu Foujita was a French twentieth-century artist of Japanese descent. He is known for his unique style, combining elements of Japanese painting and printmaking with European realism.
Foujita created a wide range of works in a variety of genres, including nudes, images of cats, portraits of women and children, and self-portraits. He later converted to Catholicism and began creating paintings with religious themes. The artist was internationally recognized, and his work was exhibited in many countries around the world. His work was characterized by the perfection of pictorial technique, virtuosity of drawing and an atmosphere of sophistication. The master also showed talent in graphics, photography, ceramics, theater, cinema and fashion design. Prices for his paintings were comparable to those of Picasso's works.
Elizabeth Fritsch (born 1940) is a British studio potter and ceramic artist born into a Welsh family in Whitchurch on the Shropshire border. Her innovative hand built and painted pots are often influenced by ideas from music, painting, literature, landscape and architecture.
She studied art in Japan, Spain and Germany.
Leiko Ikemura's work encompasses painting, sculpture, video and photography. She works in a variety of techniques, including oil painting, ceramic and bronze sculpture, printmaking and watercolor. She currently works in Cologne and Berlin and teaches painting at the Hochschule für Kunst in Berlin.
Élisabeth Joulia was a French ceramist. Since the 1950s, she has contributed to freeing ceramics from tradition in order to build organic forms of great sensuality that are born of her view of nature and are constantly renewed through her research and her intimate vision of the world.
Hermann Kätelhön was a German artist of the first half of the twentieth century. He is known as a realist painter, graphic artist, woodcarver and ceramicist.
Kätelhön created works depicting the people and nature of middle Germany, including portraits of peasants and sketches of fieldwork scenes. His graphic series "Work" as well as his drawings on the theme "Mining Leaders" explore the labor of miners. The artist later turned to depicting nature, especially water, including springs, rivers, glaciers, and seas.
Matsumaro Khan (Russian: Мацумаро Хан), also known as Victor Khan (Виктор Хан), is a Russian sculptor and media artist of Korean descent. His artistic approach is eye-catching, especially when he works with fired and heat-treated materials, which gives his work an unpredictable visual effect. For Matsumaro, fire is not only a tool but also an ally in creating unique works of art.
Tireless in his creativity, Matsumaro experiments with and is inspired by unusual objects such as mugs and pots, creating masterpieces that seem to open the door to an alien world. His work is a perfect blend of tradition and modernity, which makes his art recognizable and in demand both in Russia and abroad.
Jan Kollwitz is a German ceramic artist.
In his youth Kollwitz became interested in pottery, studying it with recognized masters Horst Kerstan and Yutaka Nakamura. In 1988, the Japanese kiln builder Tatsuo Watanabe built a traditional Japanese anagama kiln in his workshop in Sismar (Ostholstein). Since then Jan Kollwitz has been firing his ceramics here, the roots of which can be found deep in Zen Buddhism and the Japanese tea ceremony.
Since 1990, Jan Kollwitz's work has been shown in numerous exhibitions. The artist's work can be found in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin and other European museums and collections.
Beate Kuhn is a German ceramic sculptor.
She had an unprecedented influence on the development of German ceramics after the war, when in the mid-1960s she abandoned utilitarian ceramics in favor of free art.
After graduating from the Werkkunstschule in Wiesbaden, she founded her own workshop in Düdelsheim in 1957, developing a style that was already unmistakably her own. Here Beate Kuhn's sculptures were created from individual hand-carved and chiseled elements, which she assembled into a coherent whole. She transferred this stylistic principle of stringing geometric bodies to her designs of large-scale ceramic fountains. The artist's characteristic work can be found in every outstanding collection. The enormous number of prizes awarded to her underscores the recognition and appreciation she has enjoyed.
Bernard Leach, full name Bernard Howell Leach, is a British ceramics artist and teacher, considered the founder of the British school of pottery, bringing together East and West through him.
Because he spent most of his life in the Far East, imbibing a particular aesthetic, Bernard Leach's style is a combination of Western and Eastern art and philosophy. In particular, there is a marked influence of Korean, Japanese and Chinese ceramics, as well as traditional techniques from England and Germany. Leach viewed ceramics as a holistic combination of art, philosophy, design, and craft.
Jennifer Elizabeth Lee is a Scottish ceramic artist with an international reputation. Lee's distinctive pots are hand built using traditional pinch and coil methods. She has developed a method of colouring the pots by mixing metallic oxides into the clay before making. Her work is held in over forty museums and public collections worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2018 Lee won the Loewe Craft Prize, an award initiated by Jonathan Anderson in 2017. The prize was presented to her at an awards ceremony at The Design Museum in London.
Dietrich Lusici, born Dietrich Schade, is a German painter, graphic and poster artist, sculptor and ceramicist.
He studied graphic design at the Technical School of Advertising and Design in Berlin, then studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in East Berlin. Lusici has created painted books and posters, does bas-reliefs and ceramics, and paints figurative paintings.
