International Ceramics

INTERNATIONAL CERAMICS

INTERNATIONAL CERAMICS 9 August - 8 September 2016

Gordon Baldwin Claudi Casanovas Hans Coper Ruth Duckworth Ian Godfrey Ryoji Koie Jacqueline Lerat Magdalene Odundo Machiko Ogawa Gwyn Hanssen Pigott Lucie Rie Zung-Lung Tsai

15 Royal Arcade 28 Old Bond Street London, W1S 4SP

+44 (0) 20 7491 1706 mail@erskinehallcoe.com www.erskinehallcoe.com

Gallery Opening Hours: Tuesday - Saturday: 10am - 6pm

Black Squared Form, 1990 mixed media, 70 x 60 cm (CC-0054)

Claudi Casanovas (b. 1956) The acclaimed Catalan artist, Claudi Casanovas, is distinguished for his sculptural ceramics which he often produces in pairs or groups and in large scales.

His work is reminiscent of the forms, textures and geology of his native region.

Later this year, a book commemorating and illustrating Casanovas’s achievements, Claudi Casanovas Ceramics: 1975 - 2015, will be published.

“The pieces also maintain his robust use of clay as a mighty and resilient force of nature but one that might, at any time, return to earth; they are, in his own words, ‘as if from an ongoing archaeological excavation.’ ” — Edmund de Waal, 2011

Gordon Baldwin (b. 1932) A former teacher of ceramics and sculpture at Eton College, Gordon Baldwin is one of the world’s most renowned ceramic artists.

Opposite and on the following pages are three rare examples of early works.

“The role I take is Artist as Explorer with the vessel as my basic structure (like the structure of a Haiku). Each piece begins out of a strange compulsion to take a certain action… I usually work in series constructing by the traditional method of coiling, discovering the piece as I proceed. It is an intuitive process carried on without analytical thought.

The piece is made when the resonances are right.”

—Gordon Baldwin

Warrior, 1950s earthenware 67 x 43 cm (GB-0045)

Gordon Baldwin Torso Pot, 1964 earthenware, 45.5 cm high (GB-0044)

Gordon Baldwin Torso Pot, 1964 earthenware, 45.5 cm high (GB-0043)

Lidded jar and two jugs, c. 1970 stoneware jugs: 17 cm (height), lidded jar: 18 cm (height) (GHP-0043, 0046 & 0048)

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott (1935-2013) Ceramic artist Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, originally from Australia, rose to international fame. Early influences include modernist potters Bernard Leach, Hans Coper and Lucie Rie and the paintings of Giorgio Morandi.

Hanssen Pigott was renowned for the abstract simplicity of her meditative, off-white porcelain pots, arranged in close groupings, which can be seen as both metaphors and as ordinary everyday objects.

On the preceding page is Yellow cluster, 2012, which was on display in her final exhibition that took place at Erskine, Hall & Coe. On the opposite page are three exceptional examples of her early works dating from the 1970s.

Above and previous page: Yellow cluster, 2012 various translucent porcelains, 27 x 33 x 26 cm (GHP-0011)

“I wanted to say that when pots come out of the kiln quite often, I mean very often, I just want to say thank you because I feel they’re a gift…”

— Gwyn Hanssen Pigott (interviewed at Erskine, Hall & Coe in 2013)

Hans Coper (1920-1981) Born in Chemnitz in 1920, Hans Coper left Germany in 1939 and came to England as a Jewish refugee.

In 1946, he met Lucie Rie and began to work at the Albion Mews Studio with her, making buttons in the morning, pots in the afternoon, and drawing in the evening. It was here that Coper began making pots and distinguished himself with his own style, which is recognisable by its lack of glaze and use of white and black slips.

Coper strived, in his own words, to produce works that were ‘objects of complete economy.’

During his lifetime, Coper exhibited regularly, often alongside Lucie Rie. Subsequently his work had been acquired by many public collections and formed the basis of numerous important, international exhibitions, including “Hans Coper & Lucie Rie at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1994.” In 2009-10, a significant retrospective toured throughout Japan: “Hans Coper Retrospective: Innovation in 20th Century Ceramics” at The Museum of Ceramic Art, Hyogo, The Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, and the Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, in Shiga, Japan.

The work opposite comes from a time when Coper made a series bowls featuring abstract, semi-abstract and figurative designs. It is of particular interest because it was a gift from Hans Coper to his friend, artist Ruth Duckworth, who lived with it for the rest of her life.

Digswell Form, overleaf, was made during Hans Coper’s residency at the Digswell Arts Trust, where he was a fellow from 1958–65.

Coper arrived at the Trust with an intention “to study the requirements of architecture in the field of ceramics.

To develop forms and techniques, from tiles and reliefs to free sculptural features, both decorative and to meet certain technical and functional needs of contemporary building.”

Bowl with abstract design, c. 1950s stoneware, 7.5 x 18 cm Provenance: Estate of Ruth Duckworth (HC-0018)

“The excitement of seeing the studio shelves crammed with unfinished pots. Then the dismay of going in a week later and seeing them all thrownaway! Maybe just one left! The near impossibility of getting him to let you buy one.

The powerful impression he has left is of a sort of devotee of artistic purity, searching for a definitive refinement of form.”

— Ralph Brown 1

Digswell Form, c. 1963 stoneware with black manganese glaze, 14 cm high (HC-0022)

Ian Godfrey (1942-1992) Ian Godfrey studied at the Camberwell Art School, where his teachers included Lucie Rie, Hans Coper and Ian Auld. He set up and ran a domestic pottery workshop in Denmark in the 1970s, and then in London in the 80s. In 1974 he was awarded the gold medal at an international ceramics competition in Faenza.

Godfrey had a very unique style which included carving nearly dry clay with a pen knife and using a personal repertory of magical forms.

His last major exhibition was at Galerie Besson in London in 1989. In the catalogue for this exhibition, Lucie Rie describes Godfrey’s pots as ‘unique and beautiful.’

Cornucopia Lidded Vessel, 1970s stoneware, 31.5 x 20 cm (IG-0001)

Jacqueline Lerat (1920-2009) Working alongside her husband, Jacqueline set up a studio with Jean Lerat (1913-1992) in La Borne in 1943, revitalising the area’s wood-fired ceramic traditions and producing functional pieces. In 1955, she and her husband moved to Bourges, where they built a new wood-firing kiln and began to create more sculptural and abstracted works. Their collaboration in ceramics is considered to be among the most important in post-war France. A new generation of potters was inspired by their teaching at l’École Nationale des Beaux Arts in Bourges.

Chateau Japonais, 1994 stoneware, 30 x 22 cm (JLR-0001)

Lucie Rie (1902-1995) Born in Vienna in 1902. In 1938, Rie moved to London, where she lived from 1939 in Albion Mews. She opened her studio after the war and was joined there in 1946 by Hans Coper.

Although in her native Vienna Rie had enjoyed considerable success, her work was unknown in the United Kingdom. During the 1940s, she mainly produced domestic ware. On the opposite page is a fine example of a trio of bowls dating from this period.

As she moved forward in the following decades, her acclaim grew steadily. She had numerous exhibitions, and her works entered into many important private and public collections. On the following pages are five examples of her work ranging in dates from 1959 to 1983.

Retrospective exhibitions of her work were mounted by the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1967 and at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts and the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1981. During her lifetime additional important exhibitions of her work were organised in Tokyo and Osaka in 1989 by the fashion designer Issey Miyake, in London by the Crafts Council in 1992 and a joint retrospective was held with Hans Coper at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1994. A major retrospective of her work toured Japan in 2009.

Following page: Vase with Flared Lip, 1960s stoneware, 15.5 cm high (LR-0044) Vase, c. 1959 stoneware, 13.8 cm high (LR-0022) Small Vase, c. 1980 stoneware, 19.5 x 10 cm (LR-0036)

Opposite: Three Bowls, c. 1949 earthenware, 5 x 10 cm and 5.8 x 12 cm (LR-0046, 0047 & 0048)

LR-0044

LR-0022

LR-0036

“Art alive is always modern, no matter how old or young. Art-theories have no meaning for me, beauty has. This is all my philosophy.”

— Lucie Rie, 1950

Turquoise Bowl with Bronze Rim, c. 1983 stoneware, 10 x 20.5 cm (LR-0032)

Bowl, 1960 porcelain, 15 x 22.3 cm (LR-0040)

Machiko Ogawa (b. 1946) Born in 1946 in Sapporo, a city of the Hokkaido Prefecture of Japan, Machiko Ogawa studied crafts at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and graduated in 1969. From there, she went on to study ceramics at l’École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et des Métiers d’Art in Paris until 1971, and then in Burkina Faso, West Africa until 1975.

Machiko Ogawa’s work is deeply influenced by her travels as well as her fascination with fossils, minerals and the earth. She has explored many diverse places including SubSaharan Africa and South America.

Earlier this year, she had her first European exhibition at Erskine, Hall & Coe.

Untitled, 2015 porcelain, 17.6 x 64.3 x 44.8 cm (MO-0002)

Magdalene Odundo (b. 1950) Born in Nairobi in 1950, Magdalene Odundo attended school in Kenya and India and trained in Graphic Design.

She studied hand-built pottery techniques in Nigeria and Kenya in the 1970s.

“Magdalene Odundo is an artist whose ceramics not only effortlessly bridge the ancient and modern but also relate to African and European culture, her vessels offering an understanding of the ‘pastness of the past,’ but also of the present.”

—Emmanuel Cooper

Untitled, 1984 polished and carbonised terracotta, 30 cm high (MOD-0001)

Ruth Duckworth (1919-2009) Born in Hamburg in 1919, Ruth Duckworth came to Britain in 1936 as a refugee. She attended the Liverpool School of Art and studied drawing, painting and sculpture until 1940.

In the late 1940s, Duckworth moved to London where her parents lived. In the mid 50s, she became more involved with ceramics and went to study at the Central School of Art to learn about glazes. While she was there she developed a highly individual approach, working both in porcelain and stoneware. She eventually became an instructor at the Central School and taught there for many years.

Duckworth moved to Chicago in 1962, where she would spend the rest of her life working. Her work is in many of the most important collections around the world. She approached clay as a sculptor rather than as a potter, and brought an aesthetic rigour to her refined vessel forms, figurative sculptures and installations. She helped shape a new way of thinking about ceramics in the second half of the 20th century.

Untitled (Inv. no. 7481001), 1985 stoneware, each approx. 55.9 x 25.4 x 25 cm (RD-0039)

“Play is the essence of creativity. Creative play and gut reaction, instinct. When I work on a piece, I play. I have a whole huge section of the studio where I have an inventory of sculptural forms, simple, abstract, non-specific shapes that I find beautiful and enjoy making.

Then I start building these shapes together.

And when I find myself smiling, I say “hello!”

I think I’ve got something. The process is intuitive, not intellectual. You have to learn to be spontaneous and trust yourself.”

— Ruth Duckworth

Untitled (wall piece) (Inv. no. 193506), 2006 porcelain, 44.5 x 49.5 x 11.4 cm (RD-0037)

RK-0018

RK-0020

RK-0010

Ryoji Koie (b. 1938) Born in Tokoname City of the Aichi Prefecture, Ryoji Koie is considered one of Japan’s most innovative artists and his work has made him an international leader in ceramics.

“Ryoji Koie has an extraordinary way with clay. He handles it with a naturalness and playfulness which almost belies his skill and knowledge but which produces work of great freshness, sensuality and vigour. He delights in the clay and selects material many potters would reject as unusable, stimulated by its character just as one might respond to an impossible but fascinating person.”

— Sebastian Blackie

Tea Bowls, c. 1990 stoneware, heights 7.5-10.5 cm

RK-0014

RK-0007

RK-0009

Zung-Lung Tsai (b. 1974) Born in Chiayi in 1974, Zung-Lung Tsai is a Taiwanese potter showing for the first time in the United Kingdom.

“The hidden tranquil space in the work is like a cave; it has incredible power. It is not just a visibly real space but also builds and strengthens the work’s content.

There the eyes can find rest, the brain can think in peace, and moods can turn around and settle inside.”

— Zung-Lung Tsai

Phototropism 1408, 2014 stoneware & white glaze, 30 x 15 x 15 cm (ZLT-0002)

The Temperature of Tranquility 0904, 2009 stoneware & natural ash glaze, 30 x 22 x 25 cm (ZLT-0003)

Phototropism 1405, 2014 stoneware & natural ash glaze, 45 x 30 x 35 cm (ZLT-0001)

Erskine, Hall & Coe specialise in Contemporary and 20th century ceramics, but also explore the interplay between ceramics and two dimensional art. The gallery is in Mayfair, at the centre of London’s art district - within the Royal Arcade, a building constructed in 1879 that connects Old Bond Street with Albemarle Street. Each year we hold ten exhibitions, presenting acclaimed international and British artists as well as emerging talent.

A list of public and notable collections that have acquired works from the gallery is detailed on the opposite page.

The exhibition is illustrated online at www.erskinehallcoe.com/exhibitions/international-ceramics-2016/ Design by fivefourandahalf Printed by Pure Print Photography by Michael Harvey

Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, UK Craft Study Centre, Surrey Institute of Art & Design, Farnham, UK Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Queensland, Australia Hamilton Art Gallery, Victoria, Australia Oldham Gallery, Oldham, UK National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA The Derek Williams Trust, Cardiff, UK The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK (with the assistance of Nicholas and Judith Goodison’s Charitable Settlement) The Gardiner Museum, Toronto, Canada The Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan The National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, UK Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, UK