RAPHAËL GIARUSSO (1925-1986)

Canadian painter, sculptor and ceramist established in France since 1948. He is best known for his original creations with medieval influences.

Despite a modest family background that was not very open to art, Raphaël became interested in drawing and painting at a very young age. After graduating from the Montreal School of Fine Arts, he arrived in Paris in 1948 and moved to the Yonne in 1953, joining the Poteries d'Accolay through André Boutaud. There he met Daniel Auger, Georges Pelletier, the sculptors Francois Brochet, Pierre Merlier and the painter Georges Hosotte.

Author of numerous abstract or figurative decorations, he is particularly recognized for his production of figurines and his "wire" bestiary. The ceramic elements (head, body, limbs, etc.) are connected by metal rods made of Nikral, which are resistant to high firing temperatures. In 1963, he left the potters of Accolay, moved to Vermenton and joined forces with Georges Pelletier to open the "Rébeval" workshop in the 19th arrondissement in Paris.

In his workshop in Vermenton, he worked on his new range of characters in steel wire and ceramics with medieval themes full of humor (warriors, troubadours, damsels, musicians, etc.). His works will be distributed at Roche and Bobois and at the Salons des Ateliers d'Art in Paris. His last exhibition took place in Vermenton in July 1985 shortly before his death a year later, on January 21, 1986.

« From his very beautiful Indian ink drawings that we discover today, appears from his youngest age the quest of a man towards the light and the difficulty to reach it by means of scratched shadows, interlaced with the black ink necessary to the birth of this desired light. In parallel to these drawings, washes, paintings of young sculptural women marked by freshness, sensitivity and not sentimentality announce the potter to come. »

From Georges Hosotte, "Tribute to Raphaël Giarrusso, painter and ceramist (1925-1986)", Le Messager de l'Amitié n°238, August-September 1987