3 - Jules AGARD

Jules AGARD Double Spout - 1975 Painted terracotta ceramic Incised signature and date 24.50 × 30 × 90 cm Hand-painted ceramic; incised signature and date 9.65 × 11.82 × 3.55 in. Born in Vallauris on December 4, 1905, Jules Agard is renowned as one of the finest potters of the golden age of the “village of a hundred potters.” He began his training at age 16 at the Jérôme Massier workshop, where he worked alongside the many potters in the studio, each specializing in a particular type of form. Thanks to his keen eye—"this craft isn’t learned; it’s observed," he used to say—the young Agard became a seasoned potter within a few years. In the late 1930s, the crisis in the kitchenware pottery industry caused him to lose his job; in 1938–1939, he found a position as a potter specializing in forms at Suzanne Ramié’s Madoura workshop. Beginning in 1947, Picasso worked regularly at the workshop and needed a dedicated potter: Agard naturally secured this position. He would remain “Picasso’s potter” for twenty-two years. Jules Agard left Madoura in 1970 and devoted himself, until the end of his life, to his own work at the Poterie des Noisetiers, in the Vallauris countryside: vases, plates, and above all a bestiary of skillfully distorted forms, coated with the varied and colorful engobes that are his trademark. Jules AGARD