Upcoming
26.4 – 11.6 2025
Lucie Rie:Selected Work 1955-1982
Huxley-Parlour Wiltshire
Lucie Rie:Selected Work 1955-1982
26.04 – 11.06.2025
Upcoming
Hours
Monday to Wednesday, 10:00am – 3:00pm
Gallery
Huxley-Parlour, Wiltshire
Mildenhall
Marlborough
SN8 2LW
Huxley-Parlour are delighted to announce an exhibition of works by artist and ceramicist, Lucie Rie. Created between 1955 and 1982, the works in this exhibition were produced following her emigration to the United Kingdom in 1938 as a result of Jewish persecution in her native Austria. While in London, the artist developed a distinctive and sophisticated visual language that drew from historical ceramic practices, geology, as well as Modernism, and formed a legacy as one of the most important potters and artists of the British Post-War period.
While her inspirations and practices were broad, Rie always maintained her Modernist sensibilities; ‘Art alive is always modern,’ she wrote. Contemporary architecture and avant-garde Modernism formed much of her inspiration, and her pots display a fascination with form and line. Throughout her oeuvre, an aesthetic simplicity and lucidity is maintained, betraying her acute consciousness of Modernist tastes. Although she didn’t regard her pottery as ‘art’, Rie nevertheless significantly contributed to the canon of twentieth-century cultural production. The works in this exhibition present her intersection of formal experimentation, historical influences, and contemporary artistic movements.
Biography
Lucie Rie’s groundbreaking practice is defined by a refined clarity and simple, utilitarian forms. Rie’s ceramics are characterised by paradoxical dualities: functional and decorative; light and dark; economic and precious. In describing her affinity with pottery, Rie noted that ‘there is nothing sensational about it, only a silent grandeur and quietness.’
Austrian-born, Rie trained in ceramics in Vienna, but her reputation is largely defined by the period after 1938 when she emigrated to London to escape Nazi persecution and established a studio in Marble Arch. One of only a small number of female studio potters working in post-war Britain, Rie pioneered new ceramic techniques, most notably her distinctive raw glazing. Her ceramics unusually fit within traditions of modernist architecture and design, as opposed to craft, but incorporate subtle irregularities and variations that reveal their organic character.
Lucie Rie, born 1902, studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in her native Vienna. Her studio was formed in 1925, and in the same year she exhibited at the Paris International Exhibition. In 1937, she won a silver medal at the Paris International Exhibition. After emigrating to the United Kingdom in 1938, she created buttons as a contribution to the Allies’ war effort, and did not resume potting until 1946. Her first solo show was in London, 1949. In 1951, Rie exhibited at the Festival of Britain and the Milan Triennale. She began teaching at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in 1958, eventually retiring from teaching in 1972. The Arts Council of Great Britain staged a retrospective of her work in London, 1967, and in the same year Rie and her long-term friend and collaborator, Hans Coper, exhibited at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. She enjoyed another retrospective organised by the Arts Council in 1981, which was shown at the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In 1994, works by Rie and Coper were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Her works are held in collections internationally, including the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, The British Council Collection, and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Rie died in 1995.