Description
Sonja Landweer (20 April 1933 – 15 December 2019) was a Dutch multi-disciplinary artist, who lived and worked in Ireland for much of her life. Initially a ceramicist, she later also became known for her bronze castings with unique patinations and subtle forms, and painted, and made prints, jewellery and pottery.
Landweer was born in Amsterdam, the eldest child of three; her parents were German artist and teacher, Erna Benter-Landweer, and Dutch registrar of births and deaths, Pieter Landweer. She studied ceramics at the Rietveld Akademie in the early 1950s, and started her own art studio in 1954.
In 1962 she took part in an exhibition of six young ceramists from Amsterdam in Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, together with Hans de Jong, Jan de Rooden, Johan van Loon, Jan van der Vaart en Johnny Rolf, which signified the rebirth of artisan ceramics in the Netherlands. Nowadays she is one of the iconic innovators in Dutch ceramics in the 20th century.
In 1965, she was invited to move to Ireland to revitalise Irish craft and design as part of a group of international artists. Having moved, she met Barrie Cook. They lived at The Island, Thomastown, which later became Grennan Mill Art School, and later Jerpoint Abbey. They had one child, Aoine, in 1966. Landweer remained a resident of Ireland for the rest of her life, with the exception of a two-year medical residence in the UK. Landweer and Cooke separated in the 1980s but remained friends and supporters of each other’s arts.
She was artist-in-residence at the Kilkenny Design Workshops, and a teacher.
In 1981 she was elected to membership of the national arts academy, Aosdana. She continued drawing, painting, print-making, working in bronze, and making jewellery and pottery.
Landweer’s ceramic works consists of mostly traditional shapes, but with a very own signature. In the late 1950’s she developed her batik-technique on ceramics, which she had been developing for textiles since the mid 1950’s. She was very reluctant to experiment just for the sake of experimenting and believed in gradually developing new forms, without forcing it. Despite that, she made some surpising work during her stay at the Arabia factory (Finland) in 1964, which was exhibited in the 1965 exhibition “Nieuwe vormen van Ceramiek”.
This bowl is a rare and beautiful example of her unique experimental batik technique in ceramics. In very good condition, signed SL, h. 9, diam. 20.
A bowl with similar decoration in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam
