Yvon Bonnet, «Artiste peintre et céramiste potier (1922-2009)»

Painter and ceramist potter
(1922, Neuvy-Bouin - 2009, Hyères)
The son of a baker and a schoolteacher, Yvon Bonnet grew up near Niort, in the Deux-Sèvres department. In 1941, at 19, he moved to Paris to study at the School of Fine Arts, while working as a fitter for Renault on the Ile Seguin.
Over the decade, he enrolled, among other schools, at the art school Académie de la Grande Chaumière, where he was taught by André Lhote and Fernand Léger. He also joined the Pons studio, which specialised in lithography, and studied the sociology of visual arts with Pierre Francastel at the École Pratique des Hautes Études.
His Parisian years devoted to painting
Although he had already experimented with ceramic art, it was in painting that Yvon Bonnet blossomed and developed, with the support and guidance of influential figures – one of his most influential masters being the painter and teacher André-François Breuillaud.
Yvon Bonnet began exhibiting regularly in Paris in the 1950s. In 1949, he became a member of the Salon des Surindépendants. In 1953, he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants and was shortlisted for the Blumenthal prize ; he was awarded the Prix de la Jeune Peinture (Young Painter Prize), founded by the Drouant David gallery, while the first prize went to Bernard Buffet.
In 1954, he won the first prize at the Salon des Beaux-Arts and fifth place at the Festival de la Jeunesse Française, presided over by Jean-Picart Le Doux, for his paintings Les deux forgerons (The two blacksmiths) and Nature morte à l’usine (Still life at the factory).
In 1958, he exhibited at the Salon d’Automne (Grand Palais), the Salon de Mai and the Salon International de Toulon. That same year, he won the Prix Pacquement (first prize went to Da Silva) at the Musée National d’Art Moderne.
In 1960, he began working occasionally for the music publisher Disques Barclay, for whom he designed the covers of LPs.
Shifting towards ceramic art and opening the L. Y. Bonnet studio in Hyères. In 1961, at 39, Yvon Bonnet left Paris, driven by a desire for a sedentary and stable lifestyle. He also wanted to satisfy his need for creative freedom and spend more time with his family, which led him to the Var, not far from his parents-in-law who lived on the Giens peninsula. He settled in Hyères with his wife Lysiane and two daughters, Yolaine and Marie-Claude, then aged 9 and 6.
Yvon Bonnet founded the town’s first ceramics studio, in a narrow, discreet, medieval-looking alleyway near the Portalet, at 3 rue des Savonniers.
Yvon Bonnet’s ceramics are an extension of his paintings and drawings, with their shapes, geometry, and use of colour. He regularly attended the Madoura studio in Vallauris, an iconic centre for ceramics, to perfect his techniques and refine his work with enamels. There, he met Picasso several times during his residencies.
In his studio, Yvon Bonnet produced both functional and singular decorative ceramics in raw and glazed clay, reflecting the influence of his painting: he created lamps, vases, bowls, sculptures, bas-reliefs, and original mural compositions that adorn the fronts of cafés-restaurants, pharmacies, or private villas.
His wife, Lysiane, took part in the creative adventure and in running the studio: she welcomed customers, sold the creations, and enamelled the functional pieces. The artist’s ceramics indeed bear two distinct signatures: Yvon Bonnet or Y.B. and L.Y. Bonnet or L.Y.B. when Lysiane took care of the enamelling.
Yvon Bonnet worked as a ceramist for forty years, until the early 2000s. When he retired, this artist who knew how to give a soul to clay, devoted himself to drawing, pastel, and ink. During his travels - from the Alpine mountains to the rocks of Corsica, including the Venetian lagoons - he found an inexhaustible source of inspiration in the Mediterranean light, the reflections of the sea, the hills of Provence, the trees – particularly the trunks of centuries-old olive trees – and in all the details that nature has to offer.
Yolaine Bonnet, Laurence and Delphyne de Peretti

• 2.The Blumenthal Prize was awarded between 1920 and 1954 to writers, engravers, sculptors, architects, interior designers, and painters. See Maximilien Gauthier, La fondation américaine Blumenthal pour la pensée et l’art français (the American Foundation Blumenthal for French Art and Thought), Puf, 1974.*