Claudi Casanovas

Claudi Casanovas (Barcelona, 1956) is the contemporary Catalan ceramista with the greatest international renown, comes from the lands of Olot and is a regenerator of the art of ceramics. His work is based on a constant experimentation with the earth, with the blend of clay. The artist is attracted to the matter that is created in large pieces and is produced by chance, with cracks, with porosities, and where the mark of the footprint, the stain of ash, is evident. Claudi Casanovas has since a very young age had an important artistic relationship with the Japanese world. In 1978, together with other ceramists such as Joan Carrillo, Jaume Toldrà and Kim Montsalvatge, he founded the Cooperativa el Coure, a group that organizes, among other activities, the Summer Japan '86 workshop. It was a meeting with seven of the most significant Japanese ceramists of the time and in which, in addition, 300 ceramists from all over the world participated and which was a great stimulus for artistic ceramics. Since that meeting and with the initial help of a Generalitat scholarship, he has continued a professional relationship with the Japanese ceramista Ryoji Koie, passed away in 2020. He is a restless artist, creator of his own furnaces for baking and freezers to freeze to get the result he seeks, following a game of chance. In his Riudaura studio, he installed in 2001 a large freezer, where he freezes the mud, then breaks it and what results is fired in the oven. The unpredictability is omnipresent in his work; there are heavy objects, with gravity and with purely aesthetical forms. According to Casanovas, the concept of the Greek tekne is key in its creative method: before reaching a result the artist is enriched with knowledge that leads to an experimentation and a process, which for him already is a message. His works are part of collections in different international museums such as the Ceramic Museum Seto, Aichi, the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, or the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, among others.