Large Horses Vase by Margrit Linck | 1943

Margrit Linck is considered the Swiss pioneer of modern ceramics at the crossroads of art and design. Margrit Daepp (that’s her maiden name) trained in ceramics in the canton of Bern, then in a school of applied arts in Munich. Her drawing talents were noticed very early on, which she practiced in painting and then in sculpture. She married the sculptor Walter Linck (1903 - 1975) in 1926. The couple made frequent stays in Paris, meeting other Swiss artists such as Alberto Giacometti, Louis Conne, Robert Wehrlin, Charles Bänninger and his wife Germaine Richier. Margrit Linck was the first woman in Switzerland to open a pottery workshop (in Wabern, near Bern, then later in Reichenbach near Zollikofen). It achieved its first successes at the Universal Exhibition in Paris (1937) and at the Swiss National Exhibition in Zurich (1939). From 1942, she stopped working on the wheel herself and hired potters, in order to better concentrate on developing collections of utilitarian ceramic models. His signature is very recognizable, with this distinctive sign of a fish painted on the reverse of his pieces. The shapes were initially enameled and decorated, then from 1963 they became monochrome, white, then black, more rarely blue. Ceramic sculptures also appeared at the end of the 1930s, becoming very original and artistic during the 1950s, when she designed figures based on a woman's body with very marked references to contemporary art. , but also African and oceanic art, discovered thanks to the Swiss painter Serge Brignoni. His figures are presented in numerous exhibitions in Switzerland and beyond. From 1957, the couple often worked in a second home in France, in Saint-Romain-Le-Haut, in Burgundy. At the end of the sixties, twisted vases appeared, matt enameled, in white or blue. The death of her son in 1974 and then of her husband in 1975 marks a halt in Margrit Linck's artistic journey. She will again create, between 1981 and her death in 1983, a set of tall sculpted figures of great presence, developed from preliminary drawings, which will give her an international aura.

The very beautiful vase decorated with rearing horses that I am offering for sale today is dated 1943, with the signature “with fish”. It is a unique piece of good size, whose shape could be compared to certain works of Jean Mayodon, Maurice Gensoli or Frédéric Kiefer during their respective activities at the Manufacture de Sèvres, at the end of the 1930s. We know of this same period some rare forms of pitchers with fairly similar painted motifs. The fiery expressiveness of the animal decoration standing out in blood ocher on a background glazed with a beautiful shaded gray, comes into beautiful harmony with the classic and generous shape of the vase, well anchored on a circular base and punctuated on the around its body small earthenware cabochons placed in relief.