Beate Kuhn is one of the most important German potters of our age.
Born in Düsseldorf, 1927, Kuhn came from an artistic family home - her father was a sculptor, her mother a pianist. A study of art history in Freiburg, which began shortly after the end of the Second World War, left a lasting impression on her. When artistic modernism returned to Germany, the heroes of the young art enthusiast were painters such as Paul Klee and Joan Miró. In a pre-war catalogue, she found vessels by the ceramicist Jan Bontjes van Beek and suddenly saw her way. From 1949 onwards, Kuhn studied at the Werkkunstschule in Wiesbaden, Germany, and after her apprentice's examination at the Werkkunstschule Darmstadt with Friedrich Theodor Schroeder. In 1953, she and Karl Scheid took over the workshop of their teacher in the village of Lottstetten in southern Baden, where Beate Kuhn painted organic dishes and anthropomorphic vessels, transferring figurative abstraction inspired by her favorite painters to ceramics. Since 1957, Kuhn lived in Düdelsheim in Hesse, in the immediate vicinity of the new workshop of the couple Karl and Ursula Scheid and the studio of sculptor Bernhard Vogler: an unusual one-room building, which became a place of living and working. With her language of plastic assembled from wheel-thrown parts, developed towards the end of the 1950s, Kuhn became figure in German ceramics. In 1968 she became a member of the Geneva Académie Internationale de la Céramique and later became one of the founding members of Group 83; she was awarded numerous prizes and awards and had exhibitions all over the world.
In 2015 Beate Kuhn died at the age of 88, leaving behind a life's work that was impressive in its complexity and consistency. In 2017, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich dedicated a large retrospective to her work. Early pieces are highly desirable and sit amongst the finest collections, public and private, worldwide