Playing with Fire: Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto
Edmund de Waal curated an exhibition of acclaimed Danish ceramicist, Axel Salto (1889–1961), considered one of the greatest masters of twentieth-century ceramic art.
The exhibition was the result of a collaboration between Edmund de Waal, CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark and Kunstsilo in Norway. Starting at CLAY in Middelfart, Denmark, it will tour to the Kunstsilo in September 2024 before its final stop at The Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire, in 2025.
This exhibition brought together a significant number of Salto’s ceramic works from the CLAY Museum and The Tangen Collection at Kunstsilo, the world’s largest collection of Nordic modernist art. Salto’s ceramics were shown alongside his lesser-known and unseen works on paper, illustrations, writings and textiles, and a major new installation by de Waal which reflects on Salto’s enduring influence.
“Axel Salto is one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. He created a unique body of ceramic work that continues to fascinate me. His sculptures seem to be on the point of change: glazes are caught in flux. Vases swell as if to burst. He cared about the ways that patterns change course, shift energies, how an animal becomes a person, a man metamorphoses into a stag. Ovid ran powerfully through his life. That moment of change, transformation, is the moment when poetry occurs.”
- Edmund de Waal
Photography: Ole Akhøj
