Georges Jouve, great ceramicist of Vallauris

Georges Jouve (1910-1964) is, alongside Roger Capron, one of the two absolute signatures of 20th-century French ceramics. Trained at the Arts Décoratifs in Paris, he settled in Vallauris after the war and developed for two decades a body of work where ceramic sculpture totally freed itself from use: shell-shaped vases, biomorphic forms, wall panels, lustred black spheres, stylised animals. A rare, demanding production, whose pieces now reach dizzying prices at auction. Picasso, a few kilometres away, would make ceramics his contemporary.