KANSAI NOGUCHI

TOKYO, JAPAN

B. 1982

CERAMICIST & PAINTER

Founded in 2016, Kansai Noguchi Studio produces striking, handmade ceramic vases in a limited palette inspired by the Japanese prehistoric Jomon period. Working with clay, glazes, and brushes, Noguchi crafts vessels in a variety of shapes, sizes, and textures that meld his aural and visual aesthetics; he strives for his ceramics to possess a sense of musicality and an authentic “Japanese-ness.”

MARIKO IJUIN

TOKYO, JAPAN

B. 1982

CERAMICIST & PAINTER

Mariko Ijuin’s unmistakable voltage developed over the past forty years in painted ceramics that are at once roughly hewn and deeply refined. A graduate of the prestigious all-women’s Joshibi University of Arts and Designs, her textural ceramic sculptures, murals, and donabes are characterized by energetic daubs of color and graphic movement that capture the performance of their creation in her hands.

BRIGITTE PÉNICAUD

PRISSAC, FRANCE 

B. 1954

CERAMICIST

The dazzling gestures of color animating Brigitte Pénicaud’s ceramics are evocations of the landscape visible through her studio window. Sky, plants, water, and life itself find their voice in the clay on her wheel, which she plays with until something original appears—irregular twists, broken surfaces, functional vessels, and pure artistic forms.

JEAN-FRANÇOIS THIÉRION

HEDEGÅRD, DENMARK AND LA BORNE, FRANCE

B. 1960

CERAMICIST

A student and resident of France’s ceramic center, La Borne, Jean-François Thiérion reinvigorates the sophisticated precision of his vessels with experimental gestures, transferring his connection to earthborn materials through his hands. Each piece further blurs the lines of functional and fine art in its rhythmically and vibrantly hand-painted engobe, a signature Thiérion has developed over decades.

GEORGE E. OHR

USA

1857-1918

The self-proclaimed “Mad Potter of Biloxi,” George Ohr transformed the traditional folk aesthetic in pottery into a pioneering form all his own. The self-taught American ceramicist’s vessels are technical tours de force, unrivaled in the thinness of their bodies, the control with which they are shaped—and, crucially, the ways they are misshapen. Ohr threw technically perfect vessels, then folded and twisted them into unique, unconventional forms. Though he claimed to have made more than 20,000 ceramic pieces, his work remained largely unknown at the time of his death in 1918. For decades, his pots sat in a garage in Mississippi, behind a gas station owned by his sons, before being unearthed and recognized for their preeminent, groundbreaking importance: Ohr’s work is now seen as a harbinger of the American abstract sculpture and pottery movement, a significant chapter in the history of American ceramics that rose to prominence in the mid-20th century.

SYOTATSU

WAKAYAMA, JAPAN

B. 1982

PAINTER

Tatsuya Kawai, or Syotatsu makes expressive paintings guided by the climate and spirituality of the land from his studio in Wakayama. Trained at Kyoto University of the Arts, Syotatsu was first introduced to the art of portraiture at the age of nineteen on the streets of Kyoto, where he met the many people who inspired an evolution of his style. Upon moving back to Wakayama, Syotatsu became increasingly observant of the beauty and divinity of the rural landscape that would become the signature symbol of his paintings, and he has remained there as he hones and masters his practice.