Gilbert Portanier (1926-2023), France, Vallauris: "plate", Ceramic, Monogrammed On The Back.

Gilbert Portanier (1926-2023), France, Vallauris: "plate", Ceramic, Monogrammed on the back. Diameter 20 cm Gilbert Portanier, born September 28, 19261 in Cannes and died August 15, 2023 in Vallauris2, is a French ceramist. He is one of those who contributed to the revival of French ceramics in the 1950s in Vallauris. Gilbert Portanier studied secondary school on the French Riviera. Around the age of 17, he felt a taste for the arts arise within him. In 1945, he left for Paris to study architecture at ENSBA. He quickly turned to painting and drawing which he would soon study as an autodidact. 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 learn ceramics together. In 1954, he moved to a traditional pottery where he had large workshops and found a legendary place for ceramics where all the possibilities of a still virgin art were available to him. He learned the multiple techniques associated with it and created his own figurative, abstract, suggestive language, materialized by versatile graphics of great freedom. Its palette of colors betrays the sensitivity of the painter through its richness and intensity. For Portanier, ceramics is a way of translating feelings, emotions, the pleasures of life. He is a colorist and a connoisseur of enamel, as well as a drawing virtuoso. In 2018, creation of the Gilbert Portanier Foundation located 8 Chemin des Potiers in Vallauris. Production for Rosenthal Since 1964, Gilbert Portanier has been in contact with the German porcelain maker Rosenthal, for whom he will soon create very original models (where we find his brand) 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... The evolution of a style From the 1950s, Gilbert Portanier exploits the play of dullness and shine in opposition to a matte enamel, on which he places his decoration, and shiny colored enamels. In the 1980s, he abandoned white enamel and deepened his work with 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 963. Some prizes and distinctions 1966: Gold medal at the International Ceramics Exhibition, Brussels Grand Prize at the International Ceramics Biennale, Faenza. (In 1966, the winners of the Premio Faenza - Grand Prix - were Wilhelm and Elly Kuch! Not clear...) Gold medal at the Munich Fair 1982: Grand Prix at the International Ceramic Biennale, Vallauris 2013: Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters