Elizabeth Fritsch: Otherworldly Vessels to open at The Hepworth Wakefield this spring

The exhibition will bring together over 100 works made by the artist since the 1970s to survey Fritsch’s extraordinary sculptural forms and painterly techniques. The exhibition is largely drawn from Fritsch’s own rarely-seen private collection with key loans from public and private collections, and unseen archive material to tell the story of this innovative artist.

Initially studying harp at Birmingham School of Music and then piano at the Royal Academy of Music, Fritsch’s classical music training remained a key influence on her approach to pottery. In the mid-1960s, Fritsch taught herself to hand-build pots, before enrolling at the Royal College of Art (RCA), London in 1968. Here, she studied under Eduardo Paolozzi and Lucie Rie, as well as her main mentor, Hans Coper. Graduating in 1971, Fritsch was associated with the ‘New Ceramics’ group, a group of female RCA graduates including Alison Britton, Jill Crowley, Carol McNicoll and Jacqueline Poncelet who questioned functional and utilitarian notions of the vessel. Their expressive forms and use of vivid colours initiated a significant shift in post-war British studio pottery towards the more sculptural and expressive possibilities of ceramics. Fritsch quickly established a highly original style of hand-building, hand-painting and sculptural display methods.

Fritsch will work with the exhibition’s curator, Dr Abi Shapiro to carefully compose groups of vessels that reveal dialogues between the adjacent forms. Explaining the importance in the way the pots are arranged, Fritsch said: “The spaces between pots assembled in groups is, to me, more lovely and musical than any of the spatial relationships which may be incorporated into an individual piece. These groups are I suppose like movements in classical music – in which the arrangement adds up, hopefully, to more than the sum of its parts… enabling a dance and play in space.”

Describing herself as “a painter who makes pots”, Fritsch is renowned for harmonising bold silhouettes with colourful patterned surfaces. The exhibition will explore the artist’s use of optical illusions in both the forms and patterns on the pots, drawn from ideas in Cubism and Surrealism, that led the artist to refer to her works as made in “two and a half dimensions”. The display will reveal Fritsch’s wide-ranging interests including funerary rituals, architecture, particle physics and jazz music, as well as the artist’s fascination with systems and structures that reference “otherworldly” planes of perspective, consciousness and existence.

Otherworldly Vessels will explore in-depth the unique relationship Fritsch saw between ceramics and music. Fritsch’s musical training, as well as a burgeoning interest in jazz while she was developing her ceramic practice, encouraged her to consider how the form and patterns on her pots reference the rhythm, improvisation and virtuosity of a musician. One of the artist’s early solo exhibitions, held in Leeds in 1978, was called Pots about Music – with Fritsch stating at the time that “music has become the landscape in which I work”. The exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield will present some of the best examples of Fritsch’s Jazz Pots from the 1970s and 1980s as well as later works that show the sustained interest in music.

Fritsch’s work has continued to challenge the possibilities of pottery, sculpture and art in the 21st century, earning her global recognition with works in collections around the world, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; National Museum Cardiff, Wales; Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; and The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan. In 1995, Fritsch was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) and a Senior Fellow at the Royal College of Art.

This exhibition is in partnership with major supporter, Adrian Sassoon, London.

With additional thanks to exhibition supporters The Headley Trust, Maak Foundation and the Elizabeth Fritsch Exhibition Circle, including KENNEDYTING.

In-kind support provided by paint partner, Atelier Ellis.