Natzler | The Marks Project

About

Biography

Otto Natzler began his clay career building sculptures. After marrying Gertrud Amon in 1938 and immigrating to America he began to formulate the glazes used on the pots she threw. Otto and Gertrud were artistic collaborators for over 30 years.

They had a set division of labor in the studio. Otto glazed the pots his wife Gertrud created from earthenware clay. He was a true innovator and his glaze experiments over the years resulted in over 2,000 glazes in an endless range of colors and textures, from rough to slick. Gertrud left behind a number of unfinished pieces at the time of her death in 1971. Over the remaining years of his life Otto slowly glazed these pieces. A year or so after Gertrud?s passing Otto turned to creating his own works, building his pieces using slab construction techniques.

See Gertrud Natzler for more information.

Apprenticeships & Residencies

Primary Work Experience

Other

Public Collections

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii

Crocker Museum, Sacramento, California

Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York

Grace Museum, Abilene, Texas

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, California

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York

Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche, Faenza, Italy

Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York

Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York

Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut

Bibliography

Form and Fire: Natzler Ceramics, 1939-1972. Washington: Published for the Renwick Gallery of the National Collection of Fine Arts by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1973.

Gertrud and Otto Natzler, A Retrospective Exhibition (15th June - 14th August 1966). Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1966.

Kardon, Janet. Gertrud and Otto Natzler: Collaboration/Solitude. New York, NY: American Craft Museum, 1993.

Lynn, Martha Drexler. American Studio Ceramics: Innovation and Identity, 1940-1979. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015.

Natzler, Otto, Senta Raizen and Ian McKibbin White. The Ceramic Work of Gertrud and Otto Natzler. San Francisco, CA: M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, 1971.

Natzler, Gertrud and Otto. Catalog of the Collection of Mrs. Leonard M. Sperry and a Monograph by Otto Natzler. Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1968.

The Jewish Museum. Ceramics an Exhibit: Gertrud and Otto Natzler. New York, NY: The Jewish Museum, 1958.

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