Lucie Rie
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After graduation in 1926, she married Hans Rie, her childhood friend. During the next decade, Lucie displayed her pots, bowls, vases and vessels at International Exhibitions in cities around Europe, and got awarded Gold Medals. In 1938 a few months before the start of the Second World War, the Rie couple went to the UK, as a part of the plan to go further to the USA. However, Lucie decided to stay in London and persuaded her husband to move on without her. At the start, her pieces had a cold welcome in Britain’s art society, as a result of the Modern Movement ideas she applied to them, which differed from the common rustic look, Brits were used to.
After the war, the artist met young Hans Coper, also an exile, who was supposed to help her with the production of buttons. Instead, his talent, support, and persuasion convinced Rie to return to the creations she originally made in Austria. New pots got sophisticated and eye-catching, leaving the impression of a delicate, yet robust pieces with fluctuations and mild inclinations in form. In her sixty years long career, Rie constantly upgraded, refined and ennobled her craft-pottery, invented new shapes and effects which became her trademark. Simplicity and vividness are the best attributes that describe the art and ceramics of this British potter. The author swapped the original earthenware pots with stone and porcelain ones while implementing proper clay bodies and glazes. She looked at her ceramic bowl not just as artwork, but as the practical object as well. Lucie glazed her dishes, craft pots, and bowls in such inimitable way, giving them rugged and rough surface. In collaboration with Coper, the artist created incredible tablewares like tea and coffee services, and cruet sets, with typical angular and thin walls, usually colored in dark brown or white. Some of them were raised to another level with sgraffito – fine, scratched, and linear detailing. Rie constantly upgraded, refined and ennobled her craft-pottery, invented new shapes and effects that became her trademark
As mentioned above this potter’s ceramic artworks have been exhibited in a number of places, before the war, and also been awarded several times. In 1949 Rie had her first big exhibition at the Berkeley Gallery in London. Since then, her retrospectives were mounted by the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1967, and in 1981 at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Some of these shows were the group, like the one with her partner Hans Coper, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1994, others were solo. Her work was seen in the exhibition in Japan as well. In 1991 Lucie Rie became Dame of the British Empire. She died in 1995 at the age of 93.
Biography courtesy of Widewalls.ch
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Lucie Rie, UK, unique stoneware bowl with glossy oatmeal glaze F8300
$9,800.00 USD
Artist Lucie Rie