Maurice Marinot: The Glass 1911-1934

Description

Over twenty years of glass production by the French painter and glassmaker. Maurice Marinot (1882-1960) was a pioneer in the development of glass as a studio art form. Born in Troyes, France, Marinot began his career as a painter, studying at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and associated with the Fauvist movement. In 1911, a visit to the glassworks of the Viard brothers at Bar-sur-Seine was the catalyst for an all-encompassing passion for glass that would endure for twenty-six years. Drawing initially on his skill as a painter, Marinot decorated glass with striking, brightly coloured enamels. Around 1920, he began to create his own highly experimental glass forms that he considered as sculpture. A combination of failing health and the closure of the Viard's works in 1937 caused Marinot to stop making glass and he returned to painting and drawing.

Maurice Marinot was one of the first 20th-century glassworkers to exploit the aesthetic qualities of weight and mass and one of the first to incorporate bubbles and other natural flaws as elements of design.