"Adam and Eva" large earthenware Platter by Maurice Savin (1894-1973)

Maurice Savin (1894-1973) is a French painter, born in Drôme. Graduate of the School of decorative arts of Paris, he had a successful vocation in painting and the arts applied, between the 20s and 70s, in the fields of ceramics, engraving (on wood and as a medalist), lithography and literary illustration. He addressed the decoration of furniture (with Étienne Kohlmann, for Jacque Adnet), the art of stained glass, and even tapestry (Le National furniture ordered from Savin, in 1941, four hangings “Pleasures and works
"country" and in 1945, the "Twelve Months of the Year", both woven into
Goblins). Savin practiced ceramics notably at the Sèvres Manufacture, using almost exclusively stanniferous earthenware mounted with a coil. He too was attracted by the art of portraiture and high reliefs on earthenware as practiced by the Della Robbia family in Florence during from the 15th century. He was also largely inspired by the blue and yellow decorations created in brush on very creamy white backgrounds by the old earthenware makers of this same period at Moutiers in Provence. In painting, his often joyful peasant scenes, his generous nudes immersed in an ocher and serene light, – in the reinterpreted tradition of painting Flemish – have enjoyed considerable media success. Its ceramics too, although much less abundant – enjoyed great critical success, praised in particular by the famous writer and journalist Pierre Mac Orlan, who appreciated “his poetic pottery, with incomparable sensuality perhaps because of their healthy and fruity chastity. Savin's art is balsamic: its scrupulous compositions, dedicated to the simplest appearances, and for
this most moving reason, makes the eye immediately fall in love with this classic rest, which is the very rest of things colors are forms which have accomplished their task in the system of the four elements” (quoted by Anne Lajoix in “Ceramics in France 1925-1947") This is indeed an almost biblical-sounding observation, which could be applied to the exceptional large dish that I offer you: Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, dated just before
war (1939). It is very representative of this bucolic breath characteristic of his art, very “Virgilian” also in this miraculous osmosis of bodies and nature, and this on a relatively small tondo surface framed by a large border, with striking graphic decoration. The ceramic work of Maurice Savin, not very abundant compared to his pictorial production, is very rare on the art market, but very well represented in national collections French, not only in Sèvres, but also at the Museum of Modern Art (where a retrospective of the artist was presented in 1979), and at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Several ceramics by Maurice Savin were also shown in the major exhibition Lausanne “The ceramics of the masters of contemporary ceramics”, at the Palais de Rumine,
in 1953.
Signed and dated 1939 on the reverse.