His work
Jean René Gauguin was an active and prolific ceramist and sculptor from 1910 until shortly before his death in 1961. His ceramic production pieces were made in collaboration with Sleiss of Gmunden (Austria), Bing & Grøndahl, Copenhagen and Manufacture nationale de Sèvres. His earliest works were wood carvings however these rapidly evolved into bronze castings of athletes, dancers, centaurs, and classically inspired male and female torsos.
In 1921 he traveled to Gmunden, Austria and worked at the Sleiss Factory where he created tin glazed ceramic figures. As of 1923 he started working for the Bing and Grondahl ceramic studios for whom he continued creating new models throughout his life. His first major sculpture was a Boxer ( col. Statens Museum for Kunst) created in 1922 for the 1924 Paris Olympics. For this work the Olympic committee awarded him a bronze medal following a competition held at the Grand Palais in Paris. Jean Rene Gauguin exhibited several works created for B§G at the seminal 1925 Paris 'Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs'. His large stoneware sculptural groups with themes from mythology won him critical acclaim and an article in the October issue of the influential revue 'Art et Décoration'. For these works he was awarded the 'Grand Prix de la Ceramique' . He equally showed a massive silver guild hall chalice created in collaboration with Georg Jensen and Anton Rosen. In 1927 he worked as guest artist at the Sèvres porcelain works. Around this time he received a commission to create a sculpture for the Jardin des Tuileries. Referred to as La Fontaine de Chine, no sign of this structure exists today and its whereabouts remain a mystery.
On April 6, 1932, Jean René Gauguin leapt off a ten-meter diving board into the gigantic swimming pool of the resort town of Havested. This was a fitting way to inaugurate his largest work, Sea Horse. An enormous stoneware structure built in this studios of Bing § Grondahl, Sea Horse was a remarkable undertaking. Inspired by the myths of Europa and Poseidon, it dominated a massive public swimming pool where it was totally destroyed by a falling scaffolding on June 14, 1952.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, his work continued to alternate between two principal mediums, bronze and stoneware. On the one hand he produced stylized athletes and animals cast in bronze. Alongside these he expressed his fascination with the sea and its myths and it's monsters creating a fascinating ceramic opus of tritons, nereids, underwater creatures, octopuses, and unusual depictions of the horses of Poseidon. The production pieces he created for Bing § Grondahl were executed in polychrome glazed stoneware or porcelain for the smaller figures. Expressive monkeys, water buffaloes, tigers and lions in ceramic form also populated his universe. In his studio pieces he often opted for rough surfaced unglazed stoneware, witness his impressive urns with Chinese inspired temple dogs as lid handles.
In the 1950s, his ceramics became inspired from pre-Columbian Peru home of his paternal grandmother. He created a series of bottle shapes incorporating sculptural depictions. In the last year of his life these evolved into a surreal series of screaming agonizing ceramic vessels.
In interviews with journalists he clearly stated that his namesake had been a hindrance to his career. Although his work would never become a pillar of modern art like his father's, his oeuvre was totally original and not a pastiche based on a recognizable name. He expressed that bearing the Gauguin name had been a barrier to museums and art critiques accepting his work seriously.
His work interpreted the vibrant bright color spectrum used by Scandinavian painters of the early years of the 20th century onto stoneware. His formal language created a rapprochement between the erotic and the fantastic. In his depiction of an underwater world he excelled in the illustration of the phantasmagorical and the grotesque. His technical prowess with glazed figural stoneware remains unparalleled to this day as were his experiments in polychrome glaze work. Paienne cultures as diverse of China and Peru were amongst his many sources of inspiration. With his mastery of the human figure he brought to life musicians, storytellers, athletes, dancers, and jockeys, and his capture of animal movement vitalized a whole menagerie of beasts, real and imagined.
