Opening Reception: Saturday, October 22, 5-8pm
The ceramic works of the renowned ceramists Gertrud and Otto Natzler (1908-1971 and 1908-2007, respectively) will be exhibited at Couturier Gallery as part of the Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980 exhibitions, an unprecedented collaboration initiated by the Getty of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California coming together to tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene (www.pacificstandardtime.org). The exhibition will include the collaborative Gertrud and Otto Natzler works from the 1940s through the 1970s as well as Otto Natzler’s own work of the 1970s which he began to produce after the Gertrud’s death in 1971. A number of works in the show come from Otto Natzler’s private collection and have not previously been exhibited residing all these years in Otto’s studio here in Los Angeles. The opening reception will be Saturday, October 22, 2011 from 5-8pm.
The Natzlers, two of this century’s most influential ceramists, came directly to Los Angeles in October 1938, fleeing their native Vienna, Austria because of the Nazi threat bringing with them modernist European ideas and a tradition in ceramics that had not been seen in the United States. They set up their studio within several months of their arrival in Los Angeles and began exhibiting almost immediately.
To supplement their meager income from the few sales they were initially able to make, they would also have to accept students thus disseminating their skills and influence early on (one of their first students was Beatrice Wood who learned from Gertrud to throw pots and from Otto about glazes and glazing). Their enormous influence on other ceramists, including Glen Lukens, Laura Anderson, is both remarkably noticeable and legendary.
Gertrud and Otto were not only married in life, but professionally as well, collaborating on all their work- Gertrud as the master potter, and Otto as the master glazer. Gertrud’s inventive and simple, elegant forms (developed while still in Austria) was in part a reaction against the decorative elements of the Vienna Secessionist movement, part oriental in form, and part chutzpah in its eggshell thinness. She taught herself to produce vessels (bowls, vases, jars, bottles and chalices) that are visually sensual and weightless, with a focus on the pureness of the form itself.
Through the years of trial by fire (literally) and the diligence of a scientist who experimented incessantly and kept copious detailed notes enabling him to replicate so-called “accidents” in the kiln, he invented over 2,000 glazes used to complete an exquisite ceramic forms thrown by his collaborator and late wife, Gertrud Natzler. Among these are glazes that many have tried to imitate such as the crater and lava glazes with their volatile, explosive and bubbling surfaces; the crystalline glaze that resembles tiny stars in the heavens; the hare’s-fur glaze with its flawless striations; and the iridescent glazes that give a special luster to the surface of the vessels. The glazes, almost without exception, appear as cross sections of the earth, as if the kiln in which they were created echoed the heat of the earth’s core.
The exhibition history of this illustrious couple is too comprehensive to include here. It began almost immediately upon arriving in Los Angeles in 1938 and requests for exhibits continue to this day. In addition to gallery shows, they have exhibited in over 60 museums world-wide where the works have also become part of their permanent collections. A complete exhibition and collections list is available upon request.
For further information or photographs, please contact the gallery:
[email protected] www.couturiergallery.com
