ÉLISABETH JOULIA (1925-2003) - FORMER HÉLÈNE VALENTIN COLLEC - Lot 64

ÉLISABETH JOULIA (1925-2003) - FORMER HÉLÈNE VALENTIN COLLECTION Untitled, 1958 Exceptional vase with quadrangular body and soliflore neck. Proof in stoneware with scarified surface; the inside of the neck enhanced with black enamel. Signed and dated JOULIA (19)58 on the base. Height: 32cm - Length: 39cm - Width: 32cm Provenance: Former - Former Hélène Valentin Collection, painter and close friend of Élisabeth Joulia. - Galerie Alexis Mostini, Paris. Exhibitions: - N6-N7 - Les Nationales de la Céramique -Ecomusée de la Bresse bourguignonne, Château de Pierre-de-Bresse, April 4 to December 20, 2015. Our work exhibited at this event. - Élizabeth Joulia - Faites entrer l'infini - Centre Céramique Contemporaine, La Borne, from November 23 to December 31, 2019. Our work exhibited at this event. - Les Trente Glorieuses - Collection Pascal Marziano1950-1980. Un timbré de céramique -Musée de la Poterie Méditerranéenne, Saint-Quentin-la-Poterie, from April 5 to October 25, 2020. Our work exhibited at this event. Bibliography: - Joulia - Catalogue of the exhibition organized by the Anne-Sophie Duval and Mouvements Modernes galleries in October 2011, Éditions Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval et Mouvements Modernes, Paris, 2011. Our work reproduced on page 25 of the Mémoires booklet, on an archive photograph. - Joseph Rossetto - Joulia - Faites entrer l'infini - Éditions Centre céramique Contemporaine, La Borne, 2019. Our work reproduced on page 47. Initially trained in fresco at the Écoles des Beaux-Arts in Clermont-Ferrand and Paris, it was in Bourges, with ceramist Jean Lerat (1913-1992) that Élisabeth Joulia discovered her deep passion for clay, which would never leave her. In 1949, she moved to La Borne, a Cher village with a rich pottery past, known since the 13th century for its stoneware production, where Jean Lerat and his wife Jacqueline, née Bouvet (1920-2009), were based. A hotbed of traditional ceramics, La Borne enjoyed a new lease of life in the 1940s thanks to the arrival of a generation of artists who helped transform it into a hotbed of contemporary creation - Joulia, alongside the Lerats, was one of the pioneering figures in this return to the earth. Rejecting formal conventions and forms inherited from tradition, Élisabeth Joulia quickly developed a free, instinctive practice, combining turning, colombin modeling and deformation. She deliberately distances herself from symmetry and aesthetic standards, to make way for a more organic, visceral expression. Each piece bears the trace of her fingers: she shapes, compresses, jostles the material to reveal its truth; [she needs no other tools than her hands]. Joulia herself collects her engobes from nature - her main source of inspiration - and claims a direct and sincere approach to clay, without artifice. Our important vase, made in 1958, bears witness to her early interest in abstract forms; not radical abstraction, but one that resonates with nature and the human body, seen - as with the Lerats - as the primary measure of our relationship to the world. Here, she works on a vase with a rough, disproportionate shape, softened by round, organic contours. Earth asserts itself, inhabiting the space. Destructured, asymmetrical, sensitive - it sums up her plastic ambition and her universe, still in its infancy. Élisabeth Joulia's work is characterized by this organic abstraction, traversed by the forms of nature and the body, often female. After the Chestnut and Hatching series, which included Roses, she initiated the Almond series - a synthesis of her research into living things and the essence of forms. From 1974 onwards, her volumes became fuller and more sensual, taking up space with force. Then, from 1975 onwards, she introduced white stoneware, continuing her work on light, volume and purity. Her artistic approach was nourished by a quest for spirituality, enriched by her travels, notably to Egypt and Sudan, which opened her up to other relationships with the sacred and with form. Today, Élisabeth Joulia is recognized as a key figure in post-war ceramics. Through the innovative power of her forms and her intimate relationship with the material, she left a lasting mark on her generation and continues to influence contemporary ceramists. Her work, traversed by nature, the body and the sacred, unquestionably tends towards the universal and the essential.