Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, October 3, 2024: Elizabeth Fritsch, a British studio potter, and ceramist (#2127)

Elizabeth Fritsch, CBE (1940) is a British studio potter and ceramic artist born into a Welsh family in Whitchurch on the Shropshire border. Her innovative hand built and painted pots are often influenced by ideas from music, painting, literature, landscape and architecture.

Elizabeth Fritsch is a studio potter and ceramic artist. She uses fine technically proficient hand built coiling techniques; architectural ceramic form, optical effects and surface design which, are usually hand painted with colored slips. The stoneware are biscuit fired and often re-fired a number of times. Each Fritsch pot is unique, individual and distinctive. They are usually displayed in selected groups and themes set to the artist's requirements.

Fritsch initially studied at the Birmingham School of Music studying harp, and then piano at the Royal Academy of Music from 1958 to 1964; but she later took up ceramics under Hans Coper and Eduardo Paolozzi at the Royal College of Art from 1968 to 1971. Adopting her career name from her marriage to Jean Mathis-Fritsch, she had a son Bertie born in 1966. In the seventies Fritsch, was one of the first of a group of progressive 'New Ceramics' to emerge from the Royal College of Art, along with other ceramicists including Alison Britton, Carol McNicoll and Jacqueline Poncelet. Under David Queensbury, the group formed a shift and influence in British ceramic art, breaking away from the more traditional forms, colour, design and function of the more utilitarian ceramics that had preceded. Fritsch lived and worked at Digswell Arts Trust from 1975 to 1983. Her daughter Ruby Hughes was born in 1980 and in the same year was awarded the John Ruskin Bursary for a fictional archaeology project. This project went into developing an important new body of work and shift in the artist career.'Pots from Nowhere'(fictional archaeology) was shown at the Royal College of Art by Queensberry Hunt in 1984.

In 1985, Fritsch set up a studio in London. Since her first show in 1972, Fritsch has had a number of solo shows. In 1996 and 2001 she was shortlisted for the Jerwood Prize for Ceramics. Fritsch's work is represented in major art collections and museums in more than nine countries and her work is represented in major British art museum collections. A major retrospective was held at the National Museum Cardiff, in 2010, featuring a complete range of her most significant studio pottery and recent pieces. Since the late 1970s Fritsch has considered "the space between the second and third dimensions", in her work; a concept she first described as "two-and-a-half dimensions" with her distinctive rhythmic patterns and optical effects. Dynamic Structures: Painted Vessels also marked her 70th birthday. A co-curated solo exhibition of selected studio works was presented at Frieze Masters - Frieze Art Fair in October 2023 at Regents Park, London by Adrian Sassoon Gallery, October 2023 within Luke Syson's Stand Out section exploring the juxtapositions and use of colour.

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