CATHERINE BLIN (born 1943) - Lot 5

CATHERINE BLIN (born 1943) Scales Lamp. Green glazed ceramic proof, surface scratched. Signed J. BLIN under the base. Height: 20cm - Length: 20cm - Depth: 11cm Provenance: Former Former Catherine Blin Collection. Bibliography: Vianney Frain - Histoire de l'atelier Jacques Blin - Éditions du Quai des Marais, Amboise, 2016. Our work reproduced on page 105. Jacques Blin's work is particularly singular in the production of art ceramics in the second half of the 20th century. He began his career as an engineer, but his attraction to the plastic arts led him to start experimenting with ceramics as early as 1949, in parallel with his initial activity. His initial works - often monochrome luminaires - conveyed the taste for a fantastical bestiary and a heightened sense of volume that would characterize his work throughout his career. The decisive meeting between Blin and the painter Jean Rustin (1928-2013) in 1955 marked the birth of a style that would be forever recognizable. Identifiable at first glance, their ceramic art is characterized by its supple, round or zoomorphic forms, whose deeply scarified or engraved faces contrast with the softness of the pastel-toned "nuagé" (wiped) glazes. It was the painter who introduced the engraved decoration and most of the motifs. Simple animals, processions of mythological characters and dreamlike machines form the vocabulary of the work chiselled by Jean Rustin on the clay modelled by Jacques Blin. A form of figuration that has existed in ceramics for millennia, but which both artists succeeded in renewing.