JOULIA Elisabeth

Elisabeth Joulia entered the Beaux-Arts in Clermont-Ferrand at the end of the war. Her formative years took her to Paris, where she studied painting, sculpture and then fresco. It was alongside Jean Lerat, then a professor at the Beaux-Arts in Bourges, that Elisabeth learned ceramics. She then settled in the village of La Borne, the ancestral cradle of traditional stoneware pottery, whose revival she would actively participate in. For thirty years, the ceramist transformed stoneware, an austere and raw material that seemed irremediably confined to popular traditions, into organic and sensual forms. From the 1970s onwards, numerous trips provided her with new materials, sometimes gleaned during her explorations. Throughout her life, she participated in numerous exhibitions; A retrospective soberly entitled Joulia took place in 1983 at the Saint-Amand-les-Eaux museum.