Hedgehog sculpture vase - Jacky Coville (1936 - )

A charming vase from the 1960s made by the Jacky Coville atelier - stamped underneath. A particularly special piece as the artist is not selling any more of his works - his studio is a gallery / museum in Chartres.

7½" x 5½" x 4¼" 

19cm x 14cm x 11cm

An extract from Wikipedia, translated from French:

After studying engineering, Jacky Coville worked in the design office of an aviation factory for nine years. Already fond of painting, he organized exhibitions (including one devoted to Fernand Léger , whom he admired) in the seven factories of the Sud Aviation group. In 1964 he had the opportunity to buy a ceramist's kiln, which he installed in his garden in Aulnay-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis), thus creating his first workshop. As a good engineer, he seeks to find scientifically, by weighing the molecular weights of crushed and crushed materials, the perfection of Asian ceramics. He thus creates colors and enamels* unknown in contemporary ceramics and highly sought after by collectors. In 1971, he bought land in Coaraze (Alpes Maritimes), attracted "by the sun and the school of Nice ", this artistic movement which made the reputation of the region. He moved to Biot , a village located on the heights of Antibes four years later, with the incredible luck of buying, at the same time as the house where he still lives to this day, a gigantic oven having belonged to Roland Brice , ceramist of Fernand Léger. Jacky Coville can then undertake large pieces of two meters, dare monumental ceramics. It is also an opportunity to find his style, which reproduces in ceramics what he likes in painting, a mixture of cubism (Picasso, Léger, Braque, Miro) and free figuration. From 1982, he was represented by the Capazza gallery and even became a permanent artist.

With numerous awards, such as the gold medal of Faenza or that of Vallauris , his sculptures are often exhibited in situ, such as at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice or in the Saint-Sulpice fountain in Paris, but also acquired by major institutions (FRAC Ile-de-France, National Library of France, Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, Sèvres Museum. In 1986, under the leadership of President of the Republic François Mitterrand, as part of the 1% artistic, the Lycée Fernand Léger de Fourchambault former name of the LP Pierre Bérégovoy before its merger with the Lycée Aragon de Nevers the acquisition of a work by J. Coville. To invent his fabulous universe made of hybrid, comic and poetic creatures, Jacky Coville deconstructs and reconstructs human and animal bodies in his own way . He likes to measure himself with pieces of enormous dimensions (up to 6 m long)]. One of his poetic monumental tulips requires ten days of modelling, two months of drying and several days of baking at 1300°. A gigantic work like the Sea Serpent took a year of his life. Although ceramists are much better recognized in Japan or Italy (where he often exhibited) than in France, Jacky Coville has since acquired significant national notoriety. His works can be found in Nice in the garden of the Museum of Naïve Art and in the gardens of MAMAC, in Paris in front of the François Mitterrand Library and on the lawn of the Museum of Ceramics in his hometown, Sèvres - Manufacture et National Museums.