Description

We can't believe the word has not gotten out about Gilbert Portanier, but it will. Among other artists, he is credited with rejuvenating the French ceramics industry, centered in Vallauris, in the 1950s. But the best accolade of all came from Picasso.  Commenting on Portanier's painterly pieces, he said  "each one belongs in a museum."  Everything about this vase is unique and special -- its unusual shape, the play of matte and glazed areas, and the fantastical painting (yes, painting) of a theater scene.  This may have been produced in collaboration with Rosenthal of Germany.

Details

• Gilbert Portanier (France, 1926-)
  
• Le Theater (1988)
  
• Glazed and matte porcelain with applied paint
• Signed and dated on the side
• 13 1/2" tall, 11 1/2" wide, 3" deep
• Excellent condition

About the Artist

Born in Cannes in 1926, Portanier left for Paris in 1945 to study architecture at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts. He soon switched to painting and drawing, which he largely taught himself.  After a 1948 trip to Brussels he returned to the south of France and made a life-changing visit to the village of Vallauris where he met Picasso. Just a few years earlier Picasso had moved his ceramic production to Vallauris which rejuvenated the local pottery industry and merged the creativity of artists with that of craftsmen. Portanier's exposure to the ceramics scene inspired him and fellow artists Albert Diato and Francine Del Pierre to settle there as well.  In the 1950s Portanier moved production into a larger facility and by the 1960s had gained enough international renown to begin a collaboration with the German porcelain company, Rosenthal.

Portanier is known for his juxtaposition of matte and glazed surfaces as well as his expressive designs which evolved from drawings to full blown paintings.  

What is so significant about his early work is his mastery of drawing on pottery. In the early years, Gilbert Portanier “drew” with the brush on his pieces mainly Arcadian genre scenes inspired by Greco-Roman antiquity. On the look-out for new colour combinations, colour textures and colour compositions, however, Gilbert Portanier gradually distanced himself from drawing and switched to free painting on ceramics...indeed Portanier, like no other, conjures colourful, surrealist abstract-figurative paintings on the ceramics he has designed. -- Susan Jeffries

Portanier's work is in many major public and private ollections worldwide, including the Art Institute of Chicago and the celebrated Peter Siemssen Collection in Germany. He continues to live and work in Vallauris. The last photo is Gilbert Portanier (left) with David Packer, who was artist-in-residence in Vallauris in 2017.