Rustic Cubism

In Rustic Cubism, Bruce Adams tells the complex and fascinating story of Moly-Sabata, an art colony founded in the Rhone Valley during the height of French modernism by Cubist pioneer Albert Gleizes. Following his social and spiritual philosophies of earthly labor and a Celtic-medievalist view of Christianity, Gleizes' disciples worked to fuse Cubism with a revival of ancient agrarian, artisanal traditions. The most important and committed member of this experimental commune was ceramicist Anne Dangar (1887-1951). In part a gripping biography of this Australian expatriate, Rustic Cubism chronicles how Dangar struggled through personal battles and the tumult of the interwar era during her tempestuous tenure at Moly-Sabata. Dangar dedicated herself to the colony's aims by working in the region's village potteries, combining their vernacular elements with Gleizes' design methods to arrive at a type of rustic Cubism. Her work there would ultimately be rewarded; her pieces can today be found in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza, the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and other museums. Rustic Cubism places Dangar at the heart of Moly-Sabata's alternative art movement - one that, in its nostalgic present, attempted to construct a collective culture based on the distant past. Generously illustrated with photographs of the art and social history of the period, this captivating and original narrative will be a considerable contribution to our understanding of French modernism and early twentieth-century cultural politics as well as of the life of a most talented and intriguing female artist.

Bruce Adams is an honorary associate of the Department of Art History and Theory at the University of Sydney. An art writer and curator, he has worked on exhibitions of modern and contemporary art that have traveled to such museums as the National Museum of Art, Osaka; Nagoya City Art Museum; Heide Park Art Gallery, Melbourne; and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.