Biography
Johan Creten (born in 1963 in Belgium) is a Flemish sculptor based in Paris.
He was trained as a painter but soon turned to ceramics and monumental bronze for his work. Called "The Clay Gipsy" and working wherever he has the opportunity; from Miami to Mexico, from The Hague to New York, Johan Creten is considered a frontrunner in the revival of clay, alongside Lucio Fontana and Thomas Schütte.
He has exhibited, among many other places, at the Louvre Museum and the Musée Nationale Eugène Delacroix in Paris, the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, the Istanbul Biennale, the Mamco in Geneva and the Middelheim museum in Antwerp.
In 1996 he was awarded the Prix de Rome and could stay as resident in the Villa Medici. Between 2004 and 2007 he was visiting artist at the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres.
In 2009 he was nominated for the Flemish Culture Prize.
In 2013, he held the Theodore Randall Chair at the Alfred University, New York State.
In 2014, he presented a major solo exhibition of monumental bronzes in the sculpture park of the Middelheim museum in Antwerp.
In 2015, an entire room was dedicated to his pioneering work in the exhibition "CERAMIX" at the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht and La Maison Rouge in Paris, in 2016.
Nationality