Frans Wildenhain (German-American 1905-1980) Important 12" Studio Pottery Vase

Description: Offering this monumental Frans Wildenhain (1905-1980) studio pottery vase, approximately 12” by 5 ½” wide. Classic bottle shaped form with flared neck and lip. Inventive design of offset sgraffito marks glazed in overlapping arcs that create a clever allusion of shadowing. A very fine example of Wildenhain’s art with elements stretching from his Bauhaus origins to his RIT tenure in New York. This vase would be at home in a discerning private or museum collection. Well signed and in perfect condition with no chips, cracks or damage of any kind. Frans Rudolf Wildenhain 1905 Born Leipzig, Germany 1980 Died Rochester, New York EDUCATION 1924 Bauhaus, Weimar and Dornburg, Germany 1926 Passed Craftsman’s Examination before the Guild of Potters, State School of Fine and Applied Arts, Halle-Saale, Germany 1929 Master of Crafts APPRENTICESHIPS AND RESIDENCIES 1918-1923 Four-year apprenticeship to lithographer and graphic craftsman; six months as journeyman, Leipzig, Germany PRIMARY WORK EXPERIENCE 1922 House painter 1922 Art student 1930 Instructor, pottery, Folkwang School Workshop, Essen-Ruhr, Germany 1930 Teacher, State School of Fine and Applied Arts, Halle-Saale, Germany 1933-1940 Independent workshop, Little Jug, Putten, The Netherlands 1941Independent workshop, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 1941 Teacher, School of Applied Arts, Amsterdam 1941 Teacher, St. Loiba, Benedictine Convent, Noord, The Netherlands 1947-1950 Independent workshop, Pond Farm, Guerneville, California 1950-1970 Instructor, Pottery and Sculpture, School for American Craftsmen, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York Frans Wildenhain’s body of work consists of wheel-thrown, reduction-fired stoneware: vases, bowls, plates, tiles, teapots, and lamps, and large vessels, figurative sculpture, and commissioned murals. Wildenhain’s father and grandfather were craftsmen and carpenters, his grandmother an avid reader introduced to him the classics. In 1923, he attended a lecture by Walter Gropius, applied to the Bauhaus (founded by Gropius), and then attended for one year, working in the kitchen and garden as a poor student, until the school moved and discontinued the pottery shop. He worked with Max Krehan a fourth generation country potter in Dornburg. Gerhard Marcks was also influencial. The lectures he attended at the Bauhaus by Paul Klee “were very well prepared…it was like reading Vedas or going into Buddhism.” After Wildenhain and his wife Marguerite, whom he had met at the Bauhaus, were married, she relocated to the Netherlands and he followed; she subsequently moved to the USA two months before Germany invaded Amsterdam during WWII. Wildenhain was unable to obtain a visa as a German nationalist, in time he was drafted into the German army, and was in the trenches during the battle of Arnhem. They had been separated for seven years when he emigrated to Guerneville, California and Pond Farm in 1947. In 1958 he worked in Mexico, attended the World Clay Conference in Lima, Peru in 1968, and in 1969 worked in Japan (all pots made in Japan were subsequently sold at Shop One, the artist’s co-operative he co-founded in Rochester, New York). He was divorced from Marguerite in 1950 and married Marjorie McIlroy in 1952, and his third wife, Lili (Elizabeth Brockkardt), in 1969. Public Collections The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York Faenza International Museum for Ceramics, Faenza, Italy Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington Indianapolis Art Museum, Indianapolis, Indiana Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, Minnesota Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Oregon Stedelijk Museum, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Stoke-on-Trent Museums, Stoke-on-Trent, United Kingdom Scripps College, Claremont, California Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, Washington, DC University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois The Wallace Center, Rochester Institute of Technology Archive Collections, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York This monumental Frans Wildenhain vase comes from a studio pottery collection that includes Howard Kottler, Laura Andreson, Betty Feves and many others, all items I have collected in my travels over the years. Recent health issues have compelled me to find new homes for much of this art that has given me so much joy. Some of the most important pieces will be left to AMOCA and other institutions but many others will be listed here in the near future along with other items I am passing along.

Price: 750 USD

Location: Studio City, California

End Time: 2024-11-24T22:54:04.000Z

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