XXL

In recent years, interest in craft techniques and materials in art has increased significantly. This applies in particular to ceramics and glass, but also to wood and textile materials. As a result, the strict boundaries between fine and applied arts are becoming increasingly blurred. A century ago, in the era of Art Nouveau and later at the Bauhaus, this ideological separation was declared obsolete, and the unity of art and craft was recognised.

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It is therefore gratifying that today there are once again a large number of artists who do not want to ask themselves which discipline they belong to, but simply take creative pleasure in making vases as well as paintings or sculptures.

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When is a vase a sculpture? Is a vase only half a sculpture because it is supposed to contain flowers? Can't it also be both a sculpture and a vase? The ceramic artist Johannes Nagel, whose works are now in major art museums, wrote about his vases: "I have rarely thought about flowers."