Axel Salto

Antik, New York

Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2003

Axel Salto’s ceramics radiate a vivid, almost elemental vitality. Whether vessels, tiles, lighting, or purely sculptural forms, their ridges and swelling contours heighten a sense of organic drama, while glazes, Mussel Blue, Solfatara Yellow, Oxblood Red, cascade across the surface like water over stone. Though often produced in series, each piece assumes its own identity, shaped by the unpredictability of flame, glaze, and kiln. Even devoted admirers of Salto’s ceramics may not realize that they represent only one dimension of his extraordinary creative life. Trained as a painter and printmaker at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, he soon emerged as an editor, essayist, and designer, founding the magazine Klingenin 1917 and extending his artistic reach to textiles, bookbinding papers, and even a ballet stage set. 

Underlying all of Salto’s work is a deeply philosophical vision. His 1949 manifesto Den Spirende Stil (“The Sprouting Style”), one of the seminal texts of twentieth-century design, articulates a belief that artistic form should capture the inner vitality of nature. Inspired by the pioneering research of biologist Jagadish Chandra Bose, who revealed the subtle, rhythmic life of plants, Salto sought not to depict flora literally, but to express their animating forces. In ceramics, this meant moving beyond conventionalized ornament or strict naturalism toward a renewed abstraction grounded in nature’s own structural principles. He invited artists to “look at the flower from within… follow the plant right down into the seed.” 

This philosophy unfolds visibly in his ceramics, which trace a lyrical evolution of growth. Simple linear motifs expand into fluting, then erupt into the “budding style,” where orderly rhythms evoke corncobs, pinecones, or seed heads straining with latent energy. Finally, in the “sprouting style,” his most celebrated mode, applied forms swell and twist with remarkable dynamism - sometimes harmonious, sometimes, as Salto himself confessed, almost “daemonic” in their freedom. Here he captured what he called the “burning now,” the miraculous instant when life surges forth. 

Joel Shapiro was an American sculptor known for his dynamic, geometric forms that often suggest the tension and movement of the human figure. Over his long career, he developed a distinctive visual language marked by clarity, balance, and a striking sense of spatial energy. Sharing a remarkable kinship in their exploration of form, movement, and space, he was also an enthusiastic and discerning collector of Salto ceramics, assembling a notably rich and varied group of works. Among them was one of Axel Salto’s more ambitious creations, the oxblood Vase in the “Budding” Style (lot 92), an exemplar of Salto’s organic, sculptural approach to ceramic design.