JOLAIN Mado

Mado Jolain joined the Ecole des arts décoratifs de Paris and the drawing and sculpture workshops of the Grande Chaumière. There she met René Legrand, who was more inclined towards painting. Sensitized by the craze for ceramics that began before the war, Mado Jolain made her first attempts at pottery in the kiln of a utilitarian ceramics workshop on rue d’Alesia. In 1946, Mado Jolain and René Legrand married and moved to Montrouge, where René set up his painting workshop. The ceramics workshop was not far away, in the 14th arrondissement. René Legrand turned their first pieces. Folk art, very fashionable in the decorative arts of the post-war period, was a great source of inspiration for them. They visited the Dijon Museum and the Museum of Popular Art and Traditions, where they appreciated the shapes of utilitarian pottery. In 1948, creations from the Mado Jolain workshop were exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Ateliers d’Art décoratif and at L’objet 1948, a landmark exhibition after the war, organized at the Galerie Denise Breteau, rue Bonaparte, Paris. Source: www.madojolain.fr