Installation view: Born From Earth, Richard Saltoun Gallery London, 2022
Carmen Dionyse is considered one of the great women ceramicists of the 20th Century. Born in 1921 her practice came to fruition relatively late in the 1970s. Throughout her work she responded with originality to ancient stories, cultural rites and rituals. She is known for her sculptural busts and masks that drew inspiration from and were sometimes named after biblical and Greek mythological figures.
From 1938 to 1946 Dionyse studied painting, printmaking, and applied arts at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in her home town of Ghent, Belgium. Dionyse later returned to study ceramics from 1955 to 1958. In 1956 she set up her first studio in Ghent, earning membership to the International Academy of Ceramics by 1967.
Dionyse has works in the collections of the Museum Contemporary Art and and the Art and Crafts Museum in Ghent, Belgium; the Royal Museum of Contemporary Arts in Brussels, Belgium; the Museum Ariana in Geneva, Switzerland; the Museum of Contemporary Ceramics in Beychne, Czechoslovakia; the Museum of International Ceramics in Faenza, Italy; the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, Canada; the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia; the Power House Museum in Sidney, Australia; and the Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art in Shigaraki, Japan.
In 2002, the International Academy of Ceramics honoured Carmen Dionyse as one of the world's three seminal ceramic artists of the 20th century.