Featuring Gustavo Pérez, Only Mexican Ceramist Who Is Internationally Admired!
Gustavo Pérez grew up in Mexico City. Before he discovered his passion for clay, he studied engineering, mathematics, and philosophy, never feeling fully satisfied or engaged.
His chance encounter with clay in 1971 felt to him like his soul’s homecoming, and he has been single-mindedly devoted to creating art ever since.
He has lived for several years each Holland and France and has collaborated with ceramic masters in many parts of the world, including Japan. He has maintained his studio near Xalapa in the state of Veracruz for more than thirty years.
Art Critics Have Been Without Qualification In Praising Pérez’s Work |
For example, Mexican writer and recipient of the Cervantes Prize, Sergio Pitol, says of Pérez’s work, “[It] is . . . charged with passion, discipline, and jubilation . . . It appears as something perfectly natural, created effortlessly, like Brancusi’s sculptures.”
According to ceramic historian Garth Clark, “When you look at Gustavo Pérez’s work, do not do so with the overly simplistic notion that a pot is merely a pot. Pots have always been containers, but not just of food and liquids. They have been revered for eons as receptacles for worship, dreams, hopes, fantasies, offerings, and history.”