Axel Salto
– Master of Stoneware
25 Februar – 17 September 2017
AXEL SALTO – Master of Stoneware is the most extensive presentation of the renowned Danish artist’s ceramic oeuvre.
CLAY has at its disposal a unique collection of Axel Salto (1889-1961) ceramic works due to the fact that the Royal Copenhagen Collection was donated to the museum in 2010 by Royal Copenhagen and Royal Scandinavia A/S. Along with this collection came a large number of his stoneware, sketches, books and glaze samples from the period that was affiliated with the manufactory – among them ceramic pieces that have never been displayed before.
The exhibition tells a story about a multi-talented artist who became the Master of Stoneware. Salto’s artistic career began in painting. He graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1911 and had his debut. But his creativity also expressed itself in book illustrations, graphic designs, jewelries, textiles, works on paper and not least ceramics with which he made an artistic breakthrough in 1925 at the International Exposition in Paris.
As editor of the critical art journal Klingen and as a member of the artists’ group ‘The 4’, Salto is a pivotal figure in early Danish Modernism. During the 1950s he was one of an exclusive group of furniture designers and craftsmen who promoted Danish design with great success under the banner of ‘Danish Modern’. Based on his observation of nature’s forms, structures and their inherent dynamisms, Salto designed the ‘fluting’, ‘budding’ and ‘sprouting’ styles which are characteristic of his ceramic work.
Today Salto’s ceramics have attained an almost cult-like status and his is admired internationally for his original form of expression.