Hamada/Artigas

Hamada Shōji and Josep Llorens Artigas are considered two great masters of 20th century ceramics. Although the trajectory and work of the two were very different, mutual respect and admiration allow us to present for the first time in this exhibition a story of shared admiration. Both coincided in seeking the innate sense of beauty and in attributing the origin of their works to an anonymous tradition and intuition: glazed and polychrome ceramics with the colours of fire and ash. However, the friendship and recognition between Hamada and Artigas is at the same time a reflection of unprecedented artistic relations between Catalonia and Japan in the middle of the 20th century. This exhibition, therefore, in addition to becoming a tribute to these two great potters, is also an open door to discovering bridges of union and the fruitful attraction between two cultures, between Japanese folk art and Catalan artists.

Gerro by MuseuNacionaldArtdeCatalunya on Sketchfab

«The shape is the support of the enamel, and it is in the enamel where I encrypt all my creative capacity»

Josep Llorens Artigas (1892-1980) is considered one of the great potters of twentieth century Europe. Artigas signed his ceramics, sometimes even baptising them with poetic and suggestive names, and resorted to universal and timeless forms, always with different and original colours. The solo trajectory of Artigas, forged in the studios of Paris, Barcelona and Gallifa, and his collaboration with renowned artists such as Raoul Dufy and Joan Miró, was recognised in the world’s leading museums and exhibition halls.

Gerro

1937-1938 Gres esmaltat. 25 a × 22 ∅ cm Signat «Artigas París 1937-8». Col·lecció particular

Gerro

1938. Gres esmaltat. 31,5 a × 13 b × 12 bs × 27 ∅ cm Signat «Artigas Paris 1938»

Gerros

1949. Gres esmaltat. 39 a × 6 b × 9 bs × 19 ∅ cm Signat «Artigas 1949»; 21,6 a × 11,5 ∅ cm Signat «Artigas». Col·lecció Josep Maria Ferrer

Vas

c. 1930 Gres esmaltat. 16 a × 20 b × 9,5 bs cm Signat »Artigas« COL· LECCIÓ OLIVAR-VIADER

Clar de lluna

1927. Gres esmaltat. 25,8 a × 12 b × 11 bs cm Signat »Artigas 1927« MUSEU DEL D ISSENY DE BARCELONA

Gerro

1949. Gres esmaltat. 38 a × 10,5 b × 4,5 bs cm. Signat «Artigas 1949». Col·lecció particular

Gerro

1971. Gres esmaltat. 27 a x 9 b x 8 bs x 18 ∅ cm. Signat «Artigas 1971» Col·lecció particular

Gerro

1937. Gres esmaltat. 22,5 a × 9,5 b × 12,5 bs cm. «Signat Artigas Paris 1937». Antiga Col·lecció d'Otto Lloyd. Col·lecció Ramón Córdoba

Gerro

1937-1939. Gres esmaltat. 33 a × 10 b × 9,5 bs × 19 ∅ cm Signat «Artigas Paris 1937-39». Col·lecció particular

Copa

1937. Gres esmaltat. 16,5 a × 23 b × 12 bs cm Signat «Artigas París 1937». Col·lecció Família Amat

Gerro

1971. Gres esmaltat. 22,5 a × 3,5 b × 6,5 bs cm. Signat «Artigas 1971» Col·lecció particular

«The important thing is not the name, but the fact that the pottery is good»

Hamada Shōji (1894-1978) is considered one of the most prominent Japanese potters of the twentieth century. Declared an Important and Intangible Cultural Property (Living National Treasure) by the Japanese government in 1955, Hamada was one of the main founders of the Mingei movement and a key figure in the recovery of the values of the Japanese ceramic tradition. Hamada worked and modelled the pieces using a hand pottery wheel, repeated shapes and used a small number of enamels, which he produced in large quantities. Also, the honesty and humility with which he worked led him to never signing his pieces. Hamada pottery was the result of experience and a shared artisanal tradition, as well as the great mastery of the enamels, fire and earth.

The headquarters of the Josep Llorens Artigas Foundation was built in 1989 by Joan Gardy Artigas in memory of his father, Josep Llorens Artigas. Its whole conception serves to remember his work and to foster artistic vocations as well as education, culture and the arts. The building was designed by the American architect Bruce Graham and is designed to produce all kinds of works of art: ceramics, sculpture, engraving or painting.

The artist’s studio

Tallers de la Fundació Llorens Artigas by Giravolt on Sketchfab

Josep Llorens Artigas working in his studio.

«Among artists, if they are not friends, it’s impossible to work together» Joan Gardy Artigas

Joan Gardy Artigas

Artigas and Hamada met in England in 1952 and met again a decade later, this time in Japan, on the occasion of the wedding of Joan Gardy Artigas (son of Llorens Artigas) to Ishikawa Mako. During the 1960s, they met again in Tokyo and in Mashiko as well as in Gallifa and Paris.

Regal de noces de Hamada Shōji a Joan Gary Artigas i Ishikawa Mako

Nines hōraibina (kokon ningyō), obra de l’artesà Mataro. 1962. FUNDACIÓ J. L LORENS ARTIGAS

Bols regalats per Hamada Shōji al banquet de noces de Joan Gardy Artigas i Ishikawa Mako

Forn de Hamada (Hamada-gama). Parella de bols per a te (yunomi). 1962 Gres esmaltat. 8,3 a × 8 ∅ cm Caixa amb segell »mongama« FUNDACIÓ J. L LORENS ARTIGAS

Noces de Joan Gardy Artigas i Ishikawa Mako.

A més de les famílies Artigas i Ishikawa, apareixen Hamada Shōji i Hijikata Teiichi com a padrins de boda. Tòquio, 1 de març de 1962. Fundació J. Llorens Artigas

Tovallola regalada per la familia Ishikawa-Artigas a Hamada Shōji

From then on, the personal relationship intensified to the point that the kiln built by the Artigas in Gallifa (Barcelona), in 1963, was made, based on the study of the kiln that Hamada had in the Japanese town of Mashiko. Many of Artigas’s pieces and some of the works made in collaboration with Joan Miró were baked in this kiln.

«In Japanese kilns the flame touches the piece and thus the quality of the enamels is altered»

Joan Gardy Artigas

The Mingei movement in Catalonia

In 1952, Josep Llorens Artigas met the potter Hamada Shōji in England, who, together with Bernard Leach and Yanagi Soetsu, were the founders of the Mingei movement. This movement, which emerged in the 1920s to preserve and vindicate Japanese folk crafts, enacted the aesthetic, honest, and functional beauty of everyday objects, and advocated for anonymous craft traditions shared by the people. Through Hamada, Leach, Yanagi and Kawai Kanjiro, Catalan artists such as Llorens Artigas, Eudald Serra and Joan Miró had access to the spirit of the Mingei movement. Not in vain, in 1950 Barcelona hosted one of the first exhibitions of Japanese folk art to be held in Europe.

Joan Miró observing the seventeenth-century windbreak Sog monogatari during the visit to Nihon Mingeikan in Tokyo in 1966. J. Llorens Artigas Foundation

Joan Miró and Josep Llorens Artigas preparing various vases for the 1963 Maegth Gallery exhibition.

Joan Gardy Artigas participating in the creation of the series of small vases made jointly by Josep LlorensArtigas and Joan Miró in early 1963

Eudald Serra

The years in which the sculptor Eudald Serra (1911-2002) lived in Japan, between 1935 and 1948, were key to helping to later spread the Mingei movement and the work of Hamada Shoji in Catalonia. In Japan, Serra began in the art of ceramics and, on his return to Barcelona, from 1950 onwards, he began to spread Japanese ceramics and popular art. Two years later, Artigas and Serra joined forces to create the AR-SE ceramics (1952-1955), a project to approach in a creative way the practice promoted by the Mingei movement: utilitarian and low-cost ceramics that, without becoming objects of ostentation, would allow beauty get closer to the daily life.

Joan Miró

Artigas and Miró had a vision of artistic creation with many points in common. One of them was not only Japanese aesthetics, but also a way of thinking, of looking at and feeling art that approached the traditions of the Orient; from the taste for the imperfection of nature and the harmony of the nuances, to the love of the accidental.

Joan Gardy Artigas

Joan Gardy Artigas (1938), son of Josep Llorens Artigas, began his career as a potter and sculptor moving between Gallifa and Paris. Interested in Japanese pottery from a young age, in 1962 he was awarded a scholarship to travel to Japan to get to know Hamada Shōji and the kilns he had in Mashiko. After marrying Ishikawa Mako that same year, Gardy Artigas' ties with Japan were consolidated, and one of the first results was the construction in the Gallifa studio of the kiln called Mashiko, made from the study of Hamada kilns. The Mashiko kiln in Gallifa is where, among others, some of the great works made in collaboration with Miró were baked.

Eudald Serra. Tetera i bols de te, c. 1940-1950 Gres esmaltat. 13 a × 18,5 ∅ cm (tetera) i 7 a × 8 ∅ cm (bols) Segell «Serra». Museu del Disseny de Barcelona

Eudald Serra. Bol amb mont Fuji, c. 1939 Gres esmaltat. 7,5 a × 11,5 ∅ cm. Segell japonès «Serra». Successió Serra / Eudald Serra. Bol amb insectes, c. 1939 Gres esmaltat. 7,5 a × 11,5 ∅ cm. Segell japonès «Serra». Successió Serra

Josep Llorens Artigas i Eudald Serra. Plat, c. 1953-1955. Gres esmaltat. 4 a × 24 ∅ cm Segell «AR-SE». Col·lecció Ramón Córdoba

Josep Llorens Artigas i Eudald Serra. Bol i gerro esmaltats. 1953-1955. Gres esmaltat. Segell AR-SE. Col·lecció particular

Josep Llorens Artigas i Joan Miró. Gerro, 1963. Gres esmaltat. Signat MIRÓ-ARTIGAS

Josep Llorens Artigas i Joan Miró. Gerro, 1963 Gres esmaltat. 11,5 a × 4,5 bs × 9 ∅ cm Signat «Miró/Artigas». Fundació J. Llorens Artigas

Joan Gardy Artigas. Gerro, 1959-1960. Gres esmaltat. Signat "Llorens Gadry-Paris". Fundació J. Llorens Artigas

Joan Gardy Artigas. Gerro, 1960. Gres esmaltat. Signat "Llorens Gardy-Paris 1960". Fundació J. Llorens Artigas

Curated by Ricard Bru

The colours of fire

JosepLlorensArtigas

1890-1980

«The shape is the support of the enamel, and it is in the enamel where I encrypt all my creative capacity»

HamadaShōji

1892-1978

«The important thing is not the name, but the fact that the pottery is good»

Bol gran (ōhachi)

Plat quadrat (kaku-sara)

Gerro dedicat a Tsugiko Serra

Bol gran (ōhachi)

Gerro quadrangular (kakubin)

Plat quadrat (kaku-sara)

Gerro (henko)

Plat

Florera (hanaike)

Gerro (henko)

Masel Racó

Art and nature

The artist’s studio

Testimoniesof a friendship

Catalonia/Japan

«Among artists, if they are not friends, it’s impossible to work together» Joan Gardy Artigas

Joan Gardy Artigas

«In Japanese kilns the flame touches the piece and thus the quality of the enamels is altered»

Joan Gardy Artigas

The beauty of chance

Japanese ceramics in Catalonia

The Mingei movement in Catalonia

Eudald Serra

Joan Miró

Joan Gardy Artigas

EXTRA CONTENT

HAMADA/
ARTIGAS

Curated by
Ricard Bru

Josep
Llorens
Artigas

Hamada
Shōji

Mas
el Racó

Testimonies
of a friendship