Upheavals and Traditions

Art changes. The long succession of styles has developed in many different ways. There were the epigones who merely wanted to carry on the great ideas of their teachers with a minor change. There were the iconoclasts who wanted to do everything differently. And there were and are those who, despite all their new ideas, always stood and still stand firmly on the ground of tradition.

Peter Strang (born 1936) is one of these. He has accompanied the art of porcelain in Germany for almost six decades, from apprentice to artistic director of the famous Meissen porcelain manufactory. He is a master of his craft - and an artistically highly individual mind, a "modernist" in the true sense of the word, who knows how to comment on his own lifetime. Even if the difference between his designs and those of the porcelain artists of three hundred years ago is more than obvious - he did what the modellers did centuries ago. He put his time into the picture and explored what was feasible in porcelain art anew in each of his designs.

This is true of many great figures in the history of art, and it is true of many designers. They draw on history and yet are entirely present.