Large Stoneware Sculpture by Beate Kuhn (1927–2015), circa 1990

Beate Kuhn (Germany, 1927–2015)
Sculpture, circa 1990 turned stoneware, glazed
Repetition and variation are the fundamental principles of the arts,
from tradition to the avant-garde. The fact that German ceramicist
Beate Kuhn, when asked about the genesis and origin of her works,
always referred to 20th-century contemporary music as a source of inspiration was not simply a personal whim of the artist. She loved listening to Luigi Nono's totally atonal music while she worked, and understood the structural analogies between the different fields,
intuitively transposing these simple fundamental principles
of artistic creation into contemporary ceramics.
She thus invented a completely personal and unique language:
surprisingly free ceramic sculpture, a surprisingly free ceramic sculpture,
derived from the authentic means and techniques of pottery, by
assembling her sculptures, which often pushed the limits
of what was technically and artisanally possible, from elements
turned on the wheel, varied to infinity and glazed with colors, to
achieve maximum complexity. It doesn't take much to see in his non-figurative alignments, connected in clusters and groups, in volumes modulated in size, color, and rhythm, compositions that could be
translated from plastic space into sonic temporality and read musically as linear, harmonic, and melodic scores, without losing their creative autonomy as ceramic sculptures. Beate Kuhn is represented in
all major decorative arts museums in Germany and in numerous museums around the world—in Switzerland, notably at the Ariana Museum in Geneva and the Bellerive Museum in Zurich—as well as in
a large number of private collections.