Georges Géo-Fourrier (1898 - 1966)

A native of Lyon who was raised in Paris, he contracted a pneumonia at the age of 16 which forced him to stay in bed for four years. He devoted this period of inactivity to drawing and reading. Recovered but nevertheless marked for life by the after-effects of his illness, he attended Mr Keller's classes at the École Nationale Supérieur des Arts Décoratifs in Paris between 1921 and 1923. After settling in Quimper in 1928, Georges Géo-Fourrier worked actively there for more than thirty years. He was an engraver, draughtsman, book illustrator, decorator, photographer and ceramist who frequented the Quimper earthenware factories. Georges Géo-Fourrier worked with the Henriot earthenware factory from 1924 to 1950 and then with the Grande Maison from 1950 to 1966.

Close to his contemporaries Mathurin Méheut, Lucien Simon and Jean-Julien Lemordant, who, like him, particularly loved the Bigouden country, he looked around him as a painter and ethnologist and it is the soul of a country that emerges from his work. He also made several trips to Africa in the 1930s which inspired him to create ceramics, drawings, watercolours and photographs.