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• Auction House:
  Deutscher and Hackett
• Sale Name:
  Twenty Classics of Australian Art + Important Australian and International Fine Art
• Sale Date:
  11 Nov 2020 ~ 7pm (AEDT)
• Lot #:
  31
• Lot Description:
  Gwyn Hanssen Pigott
  (1935 – 2013)
  Still Life With Four Bowls, 1998
  glazed Limoges porcelain, 12 pieces (6 bottles, 4 bowls, 2 beakers) (12)
  100.0 cm length
  each stamped with roundel on base
• Provenance:
  Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne; Private collection, Melbourne; Deutscher and Hackett, Melbourne, 28 April 2010, lot 6; Private collection, New South Wales
• Exhibited:
  "Gwyn Hanssen Pigott," Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne, 7 November – 3 December 1998, cat. 7
• Notes:
  ‘...Beauty, and our response to it, remains a mystery. But it seems to me that, in the alchemy of making, the pot becomes subtly humanised. It is as though a kind of knowing is translated - through care and consideration, and an intimate connecting with the stuff under our fingers, the fluidity, the resistance, the wetness, the toughness - into a form with an independent life, with its own power to move... So we speak of pots as though they are animate: we call them gentle or generous or strong or vulnerable.’1 One of Australia's most successful ceramic artists, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott is revered internationally for the abstract simplicity of her meditative porcelain assemblies that epitomise the concept of "shibui" or 'truth beauty' espoused by her mentor Bernard Leach - 'honesty, ordinariness, nobility, simplicity, humility, astringency'.2 Profoundly inspired by Leach, and other modernist potters such as Lucie Rie and Michael Cardew, these poised groupings of smooth-sided vessels, bowls and bottles are also highly evocative of Giorgio Morandi's transcendent still life studies, sharing an affinity in their composition, stillness and meticulous attention to form. A metaphorical work encapsulating the artist's enduring interest in social relations, movement and travel, the present "Still Life with Four Bowls" 1998 thus conveys a powerful sense not only of passage, but also, of purpose - shifting beyond the idea of the "still life" to evoke identities that occupy and move within their own space amidst the collective whole. Yet as Hanssen Pigott continually reminds her audience, such groupings are also ordinary domestic objects, '...just pots, that some days we might not look at twice. But they have for a moment pulled on our attention with, perhaps, a reminder of our own vulnerability, and beauty, and possibility of transformation and repose.’3 1. Hanssen Pigott, G., "Object of Ideas: Ten Approaches to Contemporary Craft Practice", Queensland, 1996. 2. Leach cited in "Gwyn Hanssen Pigott: Caravan, a parade of beakers, bottles, bowls, jugs and cups", Tate St Ives, England, 2004, p. 3 3. Hanssen Pigott, op.cit. VERONICA ANGELATOS
• Estimate:
  A$35,000 - 45,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.