Claude Champy was born on 12 September 1944. Since then he has lived in Plaisir, where his family has been established for several generations [...]. He likes to recall that his grandfather was mayor of this commune, which he himself knew as a rural boy and which has now become part of the greater Paris area.
In 8 artistes & la terre, he recalls how, as an adolescent, he discovered by chance a series of books by Henri Perruchot on the lives of Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cézanne, which instilled in him an unshakeable vocation as a painter. Later, the realisation, thanks to the Far East, that ceramics could also be ‘auteur’ art, made him see clay as a place of expression just as worthy as painting [...]. In 1963, Claude Champy failed his baccalauréat and his parents let him pursue the artistic career of his dreams. After a year's preparation at the Penninghen and Dandon studios, he trained in Paris from 1964 to 1968 at the Ecole des métiers d'art [...], now the Ecole nationale supérieure des arts appliqués et des métiers d'art [...].
At the time, it included several workshops and a hierarchical course starting with drawing, plaster, moulds and casting, under the direction of Roger Waechter.The final year, which focused on enamelling, was led by ceramist Pierre Fouquet, who had complete control over the ‘kiln room’, a kind of holy of holies where ‘you had the impression that something was happening’. Champy made the most of these facilities, in particular to carry out hundreds of enamel tests.
In those years, a trip to La Borne was a must for young ceramists:Claude Champy made it in 1965.
He recounts this episode in various tones, but always with the serious and joyful warmth that is usually reserved for founding moments. The ensuing encounters with Yves Mohy, Jean Linard, Anne Kjærsgaard, Elisabeth Joulia, Rémi Bonhert, Hildegund Schlichenmaier, Vassil Ivanoff, Jean and Jacqueline Lerat were significant. But it was above all the vision of a 1300° firing in a wood-fired kiln at Mestre that acted as a detonator for him. What he liked most of all was ‘a rich and honest way of life’...’