Michel Lévêque (1934 - 2019), Vase Called "cratère" In Sandstone, Signed, 20th Century

Vase called "crater" in molded stoneware with a beige glaze with green nuances and light pyrites. Signed ML under the base. Period XXth Michel Lévêque 1934 - 2019 Chronology Michel Lévêque was born in 1934 in Châtre, to a father. Born in Châtre (Indre), he attended the National School of Fine Arts in Bourges from 1954 to 1959. Having a keen interest in the object, the student quickly preferred the practice of pottery to painting or sculpture. Clay is the primary material of the ceramist. In 1962, he founded the stoneware workshop at the National School of Decorative Arts in Limoges where he taught ceramics for 15 years. This year also marked the construction of his personal studio, equipped with a wood-fired kiln. In 1970, he was introduced to the art of raku by his friend Finn Lynngaard, a Danish potter, an initiation coupled with an immersion in Danish culture where design is king. Raku is an almost paradoxical practice for which the notion of "functional aesthetics" of the Bauhaus is forgotten. This time, the artist puts his work to the test of chance to obtain colored surfaces with compositions that refer to informal painting. Lévêque also develops research into geometries and frees himself from the exclusivity of gesture. The wheel was abandoned in favor of molding, a technique by which obtaining programmed shapes was easier and mass production more natural. In 1977 he co-organized the first International Symposium of Ceramics of La Borne with Alain Girel, Jeanne Grandpierre, Jean Linard, Jean-Pierre Viot, Pierre Digan and Stedman. In 1978, he left Limoges to teach at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Bourges (ceramics workshop in the Art department), then as a visual artist in the Design/Interior Architecture section, of which he became the coordinator in 1986 until his retirement ten years later.