Art Deco 1925 Primavera Atelier René Buthaud Large Ceramic Panther

Rare important animal sculpture in ceramic art from the Art Deco period circa 1925 signed Primavera and E. Pierre produced under the direction of the ceramist René Buthaud, artistic director for Primavera from 1923 to 1926 (model listed on page 87 of the book “Primavera, naissance de la céramique moderne” by Anne-Sophie Duval Gallery) Beautiful composition in Modernist style with a thick ceramic structure decorated with crispy white crackled glazes called snakeskin in contrast on earth backgrounds partly reserved for a nuanced black background. Elegant animal figure of a panther with piercing green eyes, in a watchful position, walking on a volumetric black glazed terrace. Good original condition, dimensions: 80 cm long X 36 cm high.
At the end of the 19th century, the successive appearance of Parisian department stores, Le Bon Marché, Galeries Lafayette, La Samaritaine and Le Printemps, testified to this unprecedented commercial effervescence which accompanied the advent of a bourgeois class with strong purchasing power. After flamboyant early years, these large brands engaged in a fierce battle and competed in ingenuity to capture a demanding clientele. Thus, in 1912, René Guilleré (1878-1931), who founded the Société des Artistes Décorateurs in 1901, encouraged Le Printemps to have furniture and art objects produced by artistic workshops, in order to support modern decorative arts. With the agreement of Gustave Laguionie, then head of Printemps, he imagined Primavera in 1912, an art workshop in the department store, his wife Charlotte, a painter and decorator, ensured its operation, young commission managers were recruited like Marcel Guillemard, and Louis Sognot in charge of furniture and decoration, or Madeleine Sougez and Claude Lévy, for the creation of objects. Printemps Primavera bought the Sainte-Radegonde earthenware factory in Touraine, it would evolve under the direction of the great Art Deco ceramist René Buthaud who would be artistic director from 1923 to 1926. Thus, from 1923 onwards, Primavera participated in all the exhibitions and in particular in the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts of 1925 for which it had a pavilion built by Henri Sauvage and George Wybo, whose architecture is landmark. Alain-René Hardy, author of an important monograph on Primavera, emphasizes that the great strength of the art workshop was to allow great freedom to subcontractors. Primavera was thus a real success in terms of image for the department store, its product line giving an impression of novelty and diversity. It is undoubtedly for this reason that competing brands rushed to launch their own art workshops in 1922: La Maîtrise for Galeries Lafayette, Pomone for Le Bon Marché, and the Studium, the art workshop of the Louvre department store.