Head of a Women, 1975
Ceramic
38 W x 39 H x 19 D cm
Signed by Artist
France
Private Collection
On the Work
This sculpture belongs to the Hirlets’ ongoing exploration of combinatory geometric volumes in stoneware, a language they developed jointly and worked entirely outside any single ceramics movement or school. Built up from chamotte clay and finished in their bold, structured enamel palette, the piece sits between figuration and abstraction, holding the mineral texture of the stoneware even as color and form dynamize its surface.
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Michel & Andree Hirlet
Their four-handed practice has explored sculpture and architectural ceramics for more than sixty years.
Andrée and Michel Hirlet (both b. 1936, France) are a French ceramicist couple who have worked together since 1963. Andrée trained in ceramics at the Lycée de Sèvres from 1953 to 1957, before completing further studies at the École des Métiers d’Art through 1958, while Michel studied at the same school from 1955 to 1958 alongside evening drawing courses with the City of Paris. Working across sculpture and functional objects alike, the pair play with color over geometric, combinatory volumes in stoneware, ranging from small-format pieces to monumental public commissions, including fountains in Saintes and Calais, sculptural benches in Pont-l’Évêque, and large totems in Chevigny-Saint-Sauveur. Since the mid-1970s, their work has also returned repeatedly to botanical forms, giant vegetables, seeds, and plant-like figures rendered in the same bold, mineral-textured glazes.
2019 Exhibition, Dobrinka Salzman Gallery, New York.
1958 to 1963 Salon des Artistes Décorateurs and Salon de l’Art Sacré, Paris.
Their work has been the subject of a career retrospective at the Sèvres National Ceramics Museum, and they are represented by Galerie Prisme, Paris.
