Born: 1902 Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria)
Died: 1995 London, England
Year of Migration to the UK: 1938
Other name/s: Lucie Gomperz, Lucie Rie Gomperz
Biography
Potter and ceramicist Lucie Rie (née Gomperz) was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria-Hungary in 1902, the youngest of the three children of Benjamin Gomperz, a medical doctor who was a consultant to Sigmund Freud. She started studying pottery in 1922 under Michael Powolny at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule but was more influenced by the Modernist architect and designer, Josef Hoffmann. Her early neo-classical pieces were inspired by her uncle's collection of Roman pottery excavated from land on the outskirts of Vienna, round or cylindrical in shape, enhanced by textured glazes, minimal in style and domestic in scale. In 1925, she set up her first studio in Vienna and exhibited at the Paris International Exhibition the same year; the following year she married businessman Hans Rie. She exhibited throughout Europe, winning medals and prizes, including a gold medal at the 1935 Brussels International Exhibition, followed by a silver medal at the 1937 Paris International Exhibition for a group of 70 pots. The potter Edmund de Waal has commented on the contrast between her austere early pots – ‘thrown and burnished cylinders contrasting with pitted and fluxing glazes’ and the ‘gestural extravagance’ of the Wiener Werkstätte. De Waal considers her work ‘a bridge to prewar European modernism. It mediated its own place as a decorative art in the Viennese sense’.
In 1938 following the Anschluss (annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany), the Ries fled to London. However, in 1940, they were amicably divorced; Hans left London and Lucie established her studio at 18 Albion Mews, Paddington, near Hyde Park. Initially, she found little success, working as a fire watcher during the Second World War and mixing in Austrian émigré circles, including offering accommodation to renowned physicist Erwin Schrödinger. She also began producing ceramic buttons (examples of which are in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia) and jewellery for the fashion industry while working at the Bimini/Orplid Glass workshop in Soho, owned by fellow émigré, Fritz Lampl. She was joined in 1946 by the young German-Jewish émigré Hans Coper, who despite his lack of previous experience, became her studio partner until 1960. They collaborated on the first of many group exhibitions in 1948 and in 1949 she had her first major solo UK exhibition at the Berkeley Galleries in London. From 1954 she exhibited individually or with Coper, in New York, Minneapolis, Göteborg, Rotterdam, Arnhem, Hamburg and Düsseldorf, as well as in a number of British galleries. Retrospectives were held by the Arts Council in London in 1967 and at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts and the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1981. In April 1988 Galerie Besson, established by Swiss-born Anita Besson to promote studio ceramics, opened with an important solo exhibition of her works dating from 1947 to 1988. The Japanese fashion designer, Issey Miyake, who became a close friend, also organised an exhibition entitled Issey Miyake Meets Lucie Rie in Tokyo and Osaka in 1989; the Crafts Council held an exhibition in 1992 and a joint retrospective with Hans Coper was hosted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1994. Rie’s Paddington studio remained a meeting place for émigrés associated with the visual and applied arts, including artists, architects, and designers, among them George Teltscher Adams; it has subsequently been reconstructed in the ceramics gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Between 1960 and 1972, Rie taught at Camberwell College of Arts, receiving an OBE in 1968 and an Honorary Doctorate from the Royal College of Art in 1969. She was made CBE in 1981 before becoming Dame Commander (DCE) in 1991 and receiving an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh in 1992. Her unique and complex slip-glaze surface treatment and inventive kiln processing influenced an entire generation of younger British ceramists. She died on 1 April 1995 in her London home. in 2018, Ben Uri featured Rie's work in the exhibition Out of Austria, marking the 80th anniversary of the Anschluss (annexation of Austria), which showed works by more than 20 Austrian artists who had fled to Britain. Rie's work is represented in numerous UK collections including Kettle's Yard, Cambridge; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and York Art Gallery.
Related books
- Peter Wakelin, Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art (Bristol: Sansom and Company, 2019)
- 'Lucie Rie' in Ilse Korotin ed., biografiA. Lexikon österreichischer Frauen, Vol. 3, P – Z. (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2016) p. 2708
- Emmanuel Cooper, Lucie Rie: Modernist Potter (London: Paul Mellon Centre, 2012)
- Tony Birks, Lucie Rie (Catrine: Stenlake Publishing, 2009)
- Cyril Frankel, Modern Pots: Hans Coper, Lucie Rie, and their Contemporaries (Norwich: University of East Anglia, 2006)
- Tony Birks, Lucie Rie: gebrannte Erde. (Vienna: Österreichisches Museum für Angewandte Kunst, 1999)
- Walther Killy, ed., Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie, Vol. 8. (Munich, 1998)
- John Houston ed., Lucie Rie: A Survey of Her Life and Work (London: Crafts Council, 1991)
Public collections
- British Council
- Kettle's Yard, Cambridge
- Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
- Victoria and Albert Museum
- York Art Gallery
Related organisations
- Camberwell School of Arts (teacher)
- Heriot-Watt University (honorary doctor)
- Royal College of Art (honorary doctor)
- Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule (student)
Related web links
- Lucie Rie on Artnet
- Lucie Rie's biography in the Benezit Dictionary of Artists
- Lucie Rie's biography on Britannica
- Lucie Rie on Galerie Besson's website
- Lucie Rie's biography on Universalium Academic
- Obituary, The Independent, 2 April 1995
- The Lucie Rie Archive at the Crafts Study Centre
- Isabella Smith, ‘The Great Modern Potter who Made an Art Form of Buttons’, Apollo Magazine
- ‘The Pioneering Pottery of Lucie Rie’, Sotheby’s
- Radio 4 Woman’s Hour episode on Lucie Rie, 15 March 2002
Selected exhibitions
- Lucie Rie: Ceramics and Buttons, Centre of Ceramic Art (CoCA), York Art Gallery (2018–19)
- Out of Austria: Austrian Emigre Artists to the UK, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London (2018)
- Shaping Ceramics: From Lucie Rie to Edmund de Waal, The Jewish Museum, London (2017)
- Lucie Rie: A Retrospective, Hagi Uragami Museum, Yamaguchi, MOA Museum of Art, Atami, and Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art, Tochigi (2010)
- Centenary exhibition, Galerie Besson, London (2002)
- Lucie Rie and Hans Coper: Potters in Parallel, Barbican Art Gallery, London (1997)
- Lucie Rie Retrospective Exhibition, Crafts Council Gallery, London (1992)
- Lucie Rie, Galerie Besson, London (1988)
- Lucie Rie, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich (1981)
- British Potters ‘68, Quantas Gallery, London (1968)
- Arts Council Retrospective (1967)
- Lucie Rie, Berkeley Galleries, London (1949)
- Paris International Exhibition (1937)
- Paris International Exhibition (1925)
