casa adnew •
Amsterdam
Keramiek
Klaas de Boer
zaandam
•
nederland
The ceramicist Klaas de Boer is a globetrotter. He most likes to spend his time seeking out the traces of ancient cultures: China, Japan, Egypt or South America. And he is a nature lover through and through. His work contains references to ancient cultures and to timeless nature. And yet it looks modern. A balanced effect is achieved through clean forms and beautiful colours combined with decoration scratched into the clay.
From his first day at the Rietveld Academy, Klaas de Boer knew that he wanted to become a ceramicist. This was the early 1960s, the period in which ceramics developed from applied ceramics into an independent art. Picasso and the Cobra movement had already worked with ceramics in unusual ways and played a decisive role in Klaas de Boer’s development. Clay was more than a plate or a teapot.
A perfect ‘presence’ is what I am after.
The countless ways of working with clay, and the technique of working with clay, porcelain and stoneware, are central to Klaas de Boer’s work: freer work with the emphasis on aesthetics and technique rather than on function. Centuries-old firing techniques such as raku give room to the fascination that Klaas de Boer brings to his clay and objects.
The usability of pots and bowls is entirely subordinate to their artistic aspects, because it is on those perfect forms, finished in the most varied of shades, that the ceramicist scratches his images. Scratching with deep and shallow strokes is a speciality of Klaas de Boer. The images and the warm natural tones give the perfectly thrown, glazed and fired objects a ‘presence’. That perfect ‘presence’ is what Klaas de Boer is after.
Works by
Klaas de Boer
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