Gilbert Portanier - Ethnic Style Mask In Green - Vallauris - Cannes

Ref. PORTA12Gilbert PORTANIERCannes, September 28, 1926 - August 15, 2023"Green ethnic style mask"Ceramic, Size 33x20cm1999Signed and dated lower right. 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 developed a taste for the arts. 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 "Le Triptyque", where they began to teach themselves ceramics. In 1954, he moved into a traditional pottery where he would have access to large workshops, finding a mythical place for ceramics where all the possibilities of a still virgin art were open to him. He learned the multiple techniques associated with it and created his own figurative, abstract, suggestive language, materialized by a versatile graphic style 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, creation of the Gilbert Portanier Foundation located at 8 Chemin des Potiers in Vallauris. From 1964, Gilbert Portanier was in contact with the German porcelain maker Rosenthal, for whom he would soon create very original models (where we find his mark) which would 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 in contrast to a matt enamel, on which he placed his decoration, and bright colored enamels. In the 1980s, he abandoned white enamel and deepened the work of oxides by placing them freely on a white paste which highlighted 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 at the International Ceramics Exhibition, Brussels Grand Prix de la 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 Biennale, 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 National Museum of Ceramics, Sèvres1999: Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, TroyesRetrospective at the Municipal Museum of Ceramics and Modern Art, Vallauris2006: Chapelle de la Miséricorde, VallaurisPeter Siemssen Stiftung, Ratzbek (Lübeck)Porzellan Museum, Selb2009:Keramion Stiftung, Frechen (Cologne)Peter Siemssen Stiftung, Ratzbek (Lübeck)2021: Fraeylema Schlochteren Netherlands