Matthias Ostermann

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Matthias Ostermann (1951–2009) was a Canadian potter, artist, and author. He was born in Wangen im Allgäu, West Germany, and moved to Canada with his mother in 1953, growing up in Toronto. He began learning pottery as a teenager and started his professional career in 1974. Ostermann traveled and worked in Ireland, West Germany, Italy, and Australia before settling in Montreal in the early 1990s, where he lived until his death in 2009 from HIV-related lymphoma.

Artistic career
- Early on, Ostermann spent a year as a thrower at Shanagarry in County Cork, Ireland, where he produced hundreds of pots each week, learning high-fired stoneware.
- From 1981 he specialized in low-fired tin-glaze for functional wares, sculpture, and architectural tiles, later exploring Asian high-fire glazes.
- He was known for his drawing and painting, decorating pottery with maiolica and copper sgraffito. His love of stories and myths, passed down from his storytelling mother, influenced his narrative style.
- He taught and lectured widely, sharing his ceramic knowledge across Canada, Australia, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, France, Scandinavia, New Zealand, the United States, Brazil, the UK, and more.

Books and artistic output
- Ostermann wrote three books on ceramics: The New Maiolica: Contemporary Approaches to Colour and Technique (1999), The Ceramic Surface (2002), and The Ceramic Narrative (2006).
- He contributed to other publications and fostered a broad career as an educator, exhibitor, and speaker.

Boats of Passage and later work
- His final body of work, Boats of Passage, was a multimedia project reflecting his HIV-related lymphoma diagnosis in 2008. It used boats and figures to explore mortality, change, and personal relationships.
- The Boats of Passage exhibition opened in 2008 at Prime Gallery in Toronto.

Legacy
- Ostermann’s work is held in major collections, including the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Landesmuseum Württemberg (Germany), the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), the Royal Ontario Museum, and the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art in Toronto.
- In 2010, he was posthumously named an Honorary Member of the National Council for Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) in the United States.
- A Montreal play in 2016 by Marcel Pomerlo dramatized Ostermann and his Boats of Passage.
- In 2023, the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery opened an exhibit, The Decorated Surface, largely as an homage to Ostermann and his work.