Gilbert Portanier - Plate With Figures And Red Outline - Vallauris - Cannes

Ref. PORTA03Gilbert PORTANIERCannes, September 28, 1926 - August 15, 2023"Plate with figures with red outlineceramic, diameter 36cm1980Signed and dated at the bottom. Provenance:- private collection, Germany (acquired directly from the artist)Biography:Gilbert Portanier attended secondary school on the French Riviera. Around the age of 17, he felt a taste for the arts growing within him. In 1945, he left for Paris to study architecture at the ENSBA. He quickly turned to painting and drawing, which he would soon study on his own. In 1948, after a stay in Brussels, he returned to the French Riviera where, during a visit to Vallauris, he discovered the world of ceramics and met Picasso. In 1949, he created, with his friends Albert Diato and Francine Del Pierre, a small workshop, which they called "The Triptych", where they began their self-taught ceramic apprenticeship together. In 1954, he moved into a traditional pottery where he would have access to vast workshops, finding a legendary place for ceramics where all the possibilities of a still virgin art were open to him. He learned the many techniques associated with it and created his own figurative, abstract, and suggestive language, embodied by versatile graphics of great freedom. His color palette betrays the painter's sensitivity through its richness and intensity. For Portanier, ceramics is a way of translating feelings, emotions, and the pleasures of life. He is a colorist and a connoisseur of enamel, as well as a virtuoso of drawing. In 2018, the Gilbert Portanier Foundation was founded, located at 8 Chemin des Potiers in Vallauris. Since 1964, Gilbert Portanier has been in contact with the German porcelain maker Rosenthal, for whom he will soon create highly original models. (where we find his mark) which will enjoy great international success. From 1966 to 2009, he exhibited regularly in the Rosenthal Studio-Häuser in Hamburg, Bochum, Dortmund, Cologne, Mannheim, Stuttgart, Paris, Milan, Geneva, Amsterdam... From the 1950s, Gilbert Portanier exploited the play of mattness and shine by contrasting a matte enamel, on which he placed his decoration, and glossy colored enamels. In the 1980s, he abandoned white enamel and deepened the work of oxides by placing them freely on a white paste which highlights them. Today, Gilbert Portanier is still in this same century-old pottery in the center of Vallauris where he works with the same passion and enthusiasm. Gilbert Portanier died at his home on August 15, 2023 at the age of 96. Some awards and distinctions: 1966: Gold Medal of International Ceramics Exhibition, BrusselsGrand Prix of the International Ceramics Biennial, Faenza. (In 1966, the winners of the Premio Faenza - Grand Prix - were Wilhelm and Elly Kuch! Not clear...)Gold Medal of the Munich Fair1982: Grand Prix of the International Ceramics Biennial, Vallauris2013: Knight of the Order of Arts and LettersSome notable exhibitions:1954: Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg1963: Kunstgewerbe Museum (now Museum für Angewandte Kunst), Cologne1964: Museum am Ostwall, DortmundKarl Ernst Osthaus Museum, Hagen1985: Retrospective at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg1998: Retrospective at the Musée national de céramique, Sèvres1999: Retrospective at the Musée d'art moderne, TroyesRetrospective at the Musée municipal de la céramique et d'art moderne, Vallauris2006: Chapel of Mercy, VallaurisPeter Siemssen Stiftung, Ratzbek (Lübeck)Porzellan Museum, Selb2009:Keramion Stiftung, Frechen (Cologne)Peter Siemssen Stiftung, Ratzbek (Lübeck)2021: Fraeylema Schlochteren Netherlands