OLIVIA COGNET French, b. 1982

Born in Nice in 1982. She lives and works between Los Angeles and Vallauris.

Since moving to Los Angeles in 2016, French artist and designer Olivia Cognet has made ceramics a powerful language of expression, exploring forms, scales, and uses without limits. Monumental bas-reliefs, sculptural totems, furniture, and lighting: each creation, made freehand in her studio, combines graphic rigor with formal freedom. Inspired by the interplay of shadows and light in California, its modernist architecture, and raw nature, she audaciously reinterprets the great tradition of decorative arts.

Hailing from Nice and trained at the Villa Arson, Olivia Cognet draws from the legacy of the masters of Vallauris— from Picasso to Roger Capron—to make ceramics a key element of the dialogue between art and architecture. Her work, grounded in drawing, comes to life in stoneware, a local clay she uses in natural shades. Purified geometry and organic lines converge here, contrasting with the delicacy of crackled glazes or the lightness of protrusions defying gravity.

Now based in Vallauris, Olivia Cognet continues her exploration of a material in perpetual metamorphosis, sculpting a vision where the artist's hand leaves an indelible mark, balancing between dreamlike power and living functionality.