Hans Coper: Resurface at The Arc

Hans Coper: Resurface, an exhibition of massive ceramic significance, opens tomorrow at The Arc, Winchester. For the first time, the only three murals created by enigmatic artist Hans Coper (1920-1981), known as an artist-craftsman, sculptor-potter and studio-pottery maverick, are together on display alongside many pots and pieces from across his career. This exhibition returns these murals, including Winchester’s own RAPC Mural, to public view.

But it was the RAPC Mural and a ‘Spade’ Form, from which the meeting of these different works and art worlds came together. In this article, we go behind the scenes of the development of this show.  

Who is Hans Coper? 

Hans Coper was an émigré artist-potter extraordinaire. He escaped persecution in 1938 by fleeing from Germany to England. As he emerged out of wartime instability having endured a torrid time, he quickly became an exceptional ceramicist, bringing with him the hindsight of many European fine art influences.  

Coper came to the medium of clay as an art practitioner. As early as the 1940s, when Coper first came to the ceramic workshop of Lucy Rie, Jupp Dernbach, a friend, workshop associate and fellow émigré, believed Coper to be an avant-garde thinker. Arp, Mondrian, Picasso, Branscusi, Matisse and Mies van der Rohe are among the many painters, sculptors and architects whose works Coper admired. He therefore naturally adopted a modernist approach at every layer of practice and slip application. 

Regarded as one of the most important post-war studio ceramicists, Hans Coper was famed for his minimal, abstract and modernist ceramic practice. Bringing a wide range of reference points into his work, Coper channelled the spiritual and the mechanical, the historic and contemporary, into a critical mass of ever-unfolding ceramic motifs.  

A Lion and a Spade 

Coper was an elusive figure, but his importance did not elude the Allen Gallery, which purchased a ‘Spade’ Form in 1971 at the behest of curator Margaret Macfarlane. This vase, currently held in the stores of the Hampshire Cultural Trust, encapsulates much of what is fascinating about Coper’s work. The oval opening echoes an age-old tool of artists and architects. In appearance and effect it mirrors the ellipse, a shape that was used in various forms to build harmony and perspective in pieces like the Mona Lisa. The body exhibits a classic weathered Coper-like effect, achieved by manipulating clay layers in different ways. The end effect suggests the ‘Spade’ Form could have been plucked from an archaeological dig. There are many other readings that could be made of this pot. The beauty of Coper’s work is its endlessly evocative nature. 

Spade Form 1969-1970 from the collections cared for by the Hampshire Cultural Trust © Coper Estate

But this pot is not the only piece held in the Winchester area. The Worthy Downs barracks is home to a Coper mural installed in 1963. This mural - depicting a large lion and crown crest - has endured a turbulent time. Recently, the leonine form has been restored to its former glory. The mural is a marvel of ceramic construction and consists of 24 handleable sections weighing 404kg in total. In its design, it contrasts with other artists' ceramic murals of the 1960s, which were predominantly flat and tile-based. The figurative nature of the piece also appears as an outlier when compared to Coper’s own oeuvre of near-abstract vessel forms. But he was an open-minded, expansive artist who created this work at a particularly experimental period in his career. 

What better way for us to discover more about Coper than to bring these locally-held pieces together. 

The RAPC mural, a simplified version of the Royal Army Pay Corps crest, is on loan to the exhibition from the AGC Museum. 

Stoneware sparks 

The two aforementioned works have led us to a treasure trove of art, loaned to us very kindly from several institutions including the Coper estate and several private lenders. For the run of this exhibition, we have in our possession all three murals created by Coper, twenty pots and many other never-before-displayed pieces. In this show ceramic discs seem to brim with motion and the bulb-like bodies of pots expand, with discs and sharp shapes topping unlikely bases of small proportions. Explorations of shapes, shades and markings run through everything in the room and the object, the human form, the ancient and the new converge upon each other time and again. Seen together, Coper’s transformative approach comes into sharper focus. With the unearthing of each pot and artwork ready for display, the seminal nature of this show grows in its revelatory nature. 

The workings of an artist and a moment at their creative best are now on display in The Gallery. Studio pottery has never appeared as intoxicatingly exciting. 

 Hans Coper: Resurface is open until Monday 24 March.

Book tickets here.

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