Vase "Springboks", H 38,5 cm

Heinz Werner was one of Meissen’s most influential artists in the latter half of the last century. With the designer Ludwig Zepner and sculptor and modeller Peter Strang, he made up the so-called artists’ collective at the manufactory in 1960, later joined by the painters Rudi Stolle and Volkmar Bretschneider. Together, they created Meissen’s modern style of porcelain. Kaendler’s ingenious “Neuer Ausschnitt” was followed at the beginning of the 1970s with the “Großer Ausschnitt”. And with the decors “Blue Orchid” and “Arabian Nights”, Werner created modern classics. The vase presented here is an early, path-breaking work in an ideal combination: the form is by Ludwig Zepner, and the décor by Heinz Werner. The springboks, almost archaically stylised with a delicate formal vocabulary, symbolize the start of a new artistic epoch – not unlike how the beginning of art is captured in the cave paintings of Lascaux or Chauvet.