At a gallery I visited the other day, I saw a vividly colored ceramic ewer.
Its brilliant combination of vivid red and gold, together with the wonderful elegance of its form, was truly magnificent. My interest in the artist surged all at once, and to start with I got hold of an art book of her work (which I had also seen at the gallery), available on Amazon.
Yuriko Matsuda
The artist’s name is Yuriko Matsuda. She studied under Kenkichi Tomimoto at Kyoto City University of Arts, and is a highly accomplished artist who was selected year after year, from 1973 to 1983, for the avant-garde division of the Japan Ceramic Art Exhibition.
Her signature works take lips and the female buttocks as their motifs.
The motifs may be erotic, but the works — adorned with red and gold — are vivid and beautifully accomplished.
Distinctively, page after page is devoted to photographs of her installation works displayed outdoors.
At the same time, she also makes practical ceramic ware that leaves you wanting it in spite of yourself.
What a beautiful ewer! I saw it at the gallery too; it was priced at 120,000 yen.
I love the way she applies the gold and her style of shaping the clay without using a potter’s wheel.
A truly wonderful artist.
This book was published in 1992. It gathers as many as 58 works created between 1979 and 1992.
It appears to be sold secondhand on Amazon.
