Glass Artist Overview
Short introduction to the world of Czech fine art glass sculpture
Since the early middle ages Bohema belonged to the glass making countries. The excellent quality of the material, the individual and artistic processing were the trade marks of the Bohemian glass artists. During the second half of the Fifties, Czech artists detected the capability of glass for expression initiating the origin of the glass sculpture. Since this time the material glass has succeeded as a new art direction, whereby today the Czech glass artists undoubtably belong to the wolrdwide top of this art. The success has its origins in the long tradition as well as in the outstanding and unique ten-year lasting education, which consists in most cases of the studies at one of the glass schools and the subsequent studies at the Prague Academy Of Applied Arts. This comprehensive education implies the perfect skill as well the artistic realization.
Alena Matĕjka
Born 1966 in the Czech Republic Alena Matĕjka belongs to the young generation that is constantly searching for new methods in glass art. She likes to combine glass with other materials and creates her sculptures in glass as well as in stone and organic materials. Her huge installation »The Feast« was awarded with the Special Jury Award at Coburg Glass Prize 2014, Germany.
Aleš Vašíček
Born 1947 in the Czech Republic Aleš Vašíček began with purely minimalist glass objects, in which simple forms were exactly connected. When he had exhausted the possibilities of perfectly balanced composition, he gradually abandoned his original approach, and his work has become increasingly relaxed, combining geometrical forms with structures. The inner space plays as important a role as the outer, and the light permeability of the substance is highly significant. Aleš Vašíček is able to make use of a wide range of expressive possibilities. He knows how to work with light, shadow and reflection. He achieves exact proportions between lines, intersecting straight lines and curves, irregular forms, structures and imprints of reality. He works with views through an object, colour changes, a defining of spaces, the angle of reflected rays.
Andrej Jakab
Born 1950 in the Slovak Republic Glass made by Andrej Jakab is highly distinctive among the artists from the older, middle and younger generations as well as among some of the world’s glass artists. It places emphasis on abstraction and geometric principles. It fascinates by the way of presenting and defining geometrical shapes and volumes both internally and externally. It displays sharp and rounded edges, faceting, surface areas and planes, and is clear and coloured. In the silence of the glass we can see and hear its reflections, mirroring and the crystal tones of its music.
Andrej Jančovič
Born 1986 in the Slovak Republic Jančovič primarily uses geometric morphology, typically derived from a square surface or cube volume. He transforms their interior space by segmentation, multiplication or division. By using optical glass and its combination with colored glass, he creates ever-changing optical dynamic in fixed static geometric forms, depending on observer´s viewpoint. The colorless optical glass in his work represents a contrast to the colored glass, and this combination of materials is reflected in his later work.
Bohumil Eliáš Jr.
Born 1980 in the Czech Republic The artist’s education as a classical sculptor becomes apparent in his work. For him glass is an equivalent material that he uses together with other sculptural materials, such as bronze, metal or stone etc., thereby taking advantage of the transparency and the reflection of glass for his artistic expression. Bohumil Eliáš jun. also includes materials in his objects that he found in nature, making his work very varied and rich.
Eva Vlčková
Born 1966 in the Czech Republic In her objects made from molten glass Eva Vlčková combines the austere architectural form with smooth, round shapes, and thereby achieves a special tension. The translucent reflections that softly shine through the surface additionally shape the inside of the objects. By this the artist succeeds to soften the severe architecture and to give her objects soft, feminine contours.
Ilja Bílek
Born 1948 in the Czech Republic The evident artistic expression and the perfectly executed composition are the basis for Ilja Bílek’s work. His technically complicated objects that consist of perfectly cut and glued parts take entirely advantage of the capacities of the material glass: its transparency and its light reflections. Ilja Bílek likes contrasts; thus he combines opaque glass with transparent glass or flat forms with three-dimensional forms, eventually forming well-balanced glass plastics.
IRDS - I. Račková & D. Suchopárek
Both born in the Czech Republic The artistic couple studied at the University of Applied Arts in Prague. Ingrid Račková studied at the Glass Studio of Prof. Vladimír Kopecký and David Suchopárek at the Glass in Architecture Studio of Prof. Marian Karel. During their studies they started to know each other on the artistic and on the human level and founded the IRDS studio in 2001. Their sculptures made of optical glass take the form of pyramidal artifacts, symbolizing the quest for the feasible. They represent deflected, redirected, distributed or bundled thoughts that are transformed by internal and external factors.
Ivan Illovský
Born 1978 in the Slovak Republic Ivan Illovský primarily works with glass and metal, using the fragility of glass in his works as a counterpoint to the roughness of the metal. He employs the reflections and their repetitions caused by the transparency of the glass inside and outside the object to generate changing spatial tension depending on the angle from which it is viewed.
Ivana Mašitová
Born 1961 in the Czech Republic Ivana Mašitová has been creating glass art since 1988. She creates contemporary colourful crystal glass sculptures using kiln cast glass technique. She gets inspiration mainly from nature, by visiting foreign countries, hiking on her own searching for beautiful no tourist spots. Ivana was a student of professor Stanislav Libenský. After many years in this art field, in addition to talent and creativity, she has extensive experience and ability to master any project with unique results and this is reason why she is a renamed artist both in her own country and abroad.
Ivana Šrámková
Born 1960 in the Czech Republic Ivana Šrámková seeks her inspiration from indigene people or from the antiquity. For her monumental sculptures the artist partially renounces the strong characteristics of the material glass and takes instead advantage of its colourfulness, whereby the translucency of the glass is limited, due to her manner of modelling the object’s surface. She expresses her own philosophy in her sculptures of human beings and animals.
Jan Exnar
Born 1951 in the Czech Republic Jan Exnar combines in his melted glass objects the sculptured form with a perfectly cut surface. To shape the forms he makes use of the transparency of the glass and its strong colors. The effects of the light on the cast and cut forms of Jan Exnar’s glass objects transform them into fascinating, permanently changing monumental sculptures.
Jan Fišar
Born 1933 and deceased 2010 in the Czech Republic Contrary to most other Czech glass artists Jan Fišar completed a classic sculptural education; this can still be clearly seen in his glass objects. A part of his objects consisted of complicated compositions of slumped, sunken and cut hollow glass, a technique being unique in the world. The uncommitted design of his “baroque” glass sculptures convinced through the instancy of the expression and the originality of the dynamics. With his work he expressed on one hand philosophical messages and on the other hand he solved with them unique technological problems.
Jaroslav Wasserbauer
Born 1962 in the Czech Republic Jaroslav Wasserbauer belongs to the younger generation of Czech glass artists. Based on the traditional school of Czech studio glass art – established by the old masters such as Stanislav Libenský & Jaroslava Brychtová and Vladimír Kopecký – he has developed his very own style in the processing and shaping of glass. He concentrates on the technique of glass melting and clearly structured designs, geometric forms that are influenced strongly by the architecture that fascinates Wasserbauer. Wasserbauer is a progressive traditionalist: forward-looking and constantly breaking new ground without losing sight of the traditional roots of Czech glass art. He loves playing with transparency and the effects of light and shadow in his objects. He sees his art primarily as manual work. According to him, perseverance is indispensable for an artist in every respect: only in this way can a creative idea manifest itself in an individual work over time.
Jiří Karel
Born 1952 in the Czech Republic The work of Jiří Karel focuses on the use of floated optical glass slabs hot-welded in compact blocks that he sculpts and tirelessly polishes until the end composition. Often he uses also firing materials, such as pigments, and metal oxides on the glass plates for painting graphic patterns inside and outside of his sculptures. Then his colorations are first heated and then fused in a compact block. In his sculptures, the artist plays subtly with lighting and reflection and the transparent thickness of the material.
Jiří Suchý
Born 1972 in the Czech Republic Jiří Suchý attended the glass school in Nový Bor and then went on to study at the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design in Prague. His glass objects, which are melted in moulds in the kiln, follow classical Czech glass sculpture in their design language. In his compositions he works with displacements of geometric objects, layering and blending them.
Josef Marek
Born 1963 in the Czech Republic Josef Marek uses natural qualities of glass mass and its ability to create the feeling of depth in a very short space. His practical sculptural training, exceptional talent and strong imagination gives him the advantage to approach glass from many different directions. Josef, in his simple, nearly minimalistic forms – influenced by his long stay in Japan as a professor at Toyama Institute of Glass Art – creates unreal spaces with mysterious feeling or creating objects out of glass in impossible positions denying gravity.
Lars Widenfalk
Born 1954 in Sweden Lars Widenfalk is a Swedish artist who works as a sculptor, alternately in Sweden, the Czech Republic and Italy. He is considered one of those who have renewed figurative expression in the Nordic sculpture. Stone, usually marble and granite, has been his main material. In recent years, often in combination with glass.
Luba Bakičová
Born 1985 in the Slovak Republic Luba Bakičová focuses on uncovering and visualizing the hidden characteristics of glass through experimental techniques. By exposing various types of glass to high temperatures and combining them with heat-resistant concrete, she contrasts the rigidity of basic forms with the fluidity of molten glass. Her minimalist sculptures capture moments that invite the observer to perceive the present and grasp the underlying existential reality.
Lukáš Mjartan
Born 1975 in the Slovak Republic Lukáš Mjartan finds inspiration in architectural forms and converts them into high-contrast, rigid geometric works with structural and sometimes even rough gestural elements. Light and the variation in the thickness of the glass mass play with the intensity of the each of the colours that he selects for his work, thus creating expressive sculptural forms.
Malvina Middleton
Born in Cyprus Malvina Middleton started to use glass in her work as an established artist whose paintings were in collection of the State Gallery of Cyprus. Her artistic methodology includes patterns, colors, strong expression, and perfectly balanced compositions. She uses glass like blank canvas which she then covers with colored light.
Marek Brincko
Born 1981 in the Slovak Republic Marek Brincko’s work with mold-melted glass unfolds between the poles of strict geometry and organic forms. The artist is inspired by bees’ honeycombs and their regular geometric hexagonal structure. For one, he works with real honeycombs, which he collects from bee swarms and integrate into his glass sculptures. He is also working with the element of the hexagon, which bears the so-called bee code.
Marian Volráb
Born 1961 in the Czech Republic The principal theme in his glass objects as well as in his paintings is always the human being with its traces and imprints that are hidden within the world’s labyrinth. He find inspiration in the forms that were created by nature itself and through its unlimited possibilities. His objects are made by melting in the oven, similar to bulging lava. He then work radically on the cooled down surface by using big grinding stones or fine touches of other tools.
Matyas Pavlik
Born 1984 in the Czech Republic Matyas Pavlik lived for much of his life in the United States, Mexico and Portugal before returning to his home country. Like his mother, the well-known glass artist, Vladimíra Klumpar, he was artistically inspired by the various cultures. Thus, for example, the time that he spent in Mexico influenced not only his aesthetic style but also his understanding of the importance of colours. His impressive sculptures alternate between highlighting geometric and organic shapes.
Michael Behrens
Born 1973 in Germany Michael Behrens’s has developed his exclusive and noteable style in his career. The Seaformsseries embodies decades of his personal sensory experiences above and below water. The resulting works appear almost natural in nature, grown in the wild and then ossified, frozen in time. The diverse color range and interior movement varies as if created organically by the environment while each shape and structure provide a strong and powerful appearance.
Oliver Leššo
Born 1973 in the Slovak Republic The artist Oliver Leššo employs the distinctive characteristics of the material and the resulting play of light to create a fascinating interplay between the internal and external space in his sculptures. Crafted from the purest optical glass, his works feature meticulously incorporated, ethereally thin, colored, or mirrored glass elements. Leššo places particular emphasis on the internal structures that, depending on the viewing angle, multiply, change color, or completely vanish within the object. In his creations, one finds not only artistic brilliance and decades of expertise but also the results of months of dedicated polishing and grinding. The uniqueness of his one-of-a-kind pieces reaches a level of perfection that pushes the boundaries of what is achievable with optical glass.
Peter Mandl
Born 1947 in the Czech Republic Peter Mandl has devoted his life to sculptures. Through a form and melding technique, which has made him a name within the sculpting arena, he captures fleeting moments in solid forms of glass and bronze, rendering the spectator both curious and calm at the very same time. Movements reminiscent of the elements, shapes found in nature, the human body, are frozen still yet forever moving, telling a story, pleasing the eye, feeding the mind and caressing the soul. His exquisite sculptures can be seen in private and public art collections all over the world.
Petr Hora
Born 1949 in the Czech Republic Petr Hora began his studies in 1965 at the Applied College of Glass-making in Železný Brod, where Libenský acted as Director. Petr´s colored glass objects which are perfectly worked in a craftsman manner, are based on basic geometric shapes. The overall refined quality of his sculpture is often enhanced by the juxtaposition of matte and polished surfaces. But always present, is a subtle and mysterious light deep within these free-form monochromatic sculptures, and a design sensibility inspired by modern architecture.
Petr Stacho
Born 1965 in the Czech Republic The artist Petr Stacho studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague. Many of his glass sculptures are inspired by the forces of nature. They appear to have been shaped, cut and polished by a natural force. With their organic feel, they bear titles such as „Forces of Nature,“ „Waterfall“ or „Echoes from the Forest“, reflecting his penchant for these themes.
Petr Vlček
Born 1962 in the Czech Republic Petr Vlček’s compact objects consist of geometric constructions made from molten glass. They resemble mysterious, communicative signs and seem as though one could communicate by them with alien civilizations. These signs develop on the objects surfaces through the interplay of light and shade, or they develop as a result of the objects construction itself.
Petra Hřebačková
Born 1976 in the Czech Republic The daughter of Tomáš Hlavička and the granddaughter of the internationally renowned Czech glass artist Pavel Hlava, studied at the Prague Academy of Art, Architecture and Design, Glass and Ceramics. Her abstract glass objects are full of colour that are inspired by nature.
Štěpán Pala
Born 1944 in Slovak Republic Štepán’s artistic thinking has a universal timeless dimension: it is abstract and reveals the visual character and significance of mathematics and geometry. Space is the central theme of his work, and within this parameter he exploits the concepts, such as infinity, multiplication, division, curvature, and changes in inner structures – movement, transformation, segments of geometric bodies.
Stig Persson
Born 1960 in Denmark Stig Persson works with a strictly abstract constructivist and minimalist expression in his glass works, which occasionally contains reminiscences of identifiable surroundings. His works are solid cast glass, and yet the material is fragile. This wonderful, com- plex contrast reinforces the constructivist and abstract expression that has been a common thread throughout Stig’s 30-year career.
Tomáš Brzon
Born 1982 in the Czech Republic Tomáš Brzon works with simple geometrical shapes, reflections and optical illusions using cut and polished glass surfaces. His well thought-out and perfect cut reflects light, creating contours and geometric shapes within the sculpture, in this way he is able to capture the nature of glass using his primary attributes.
Tomáš Hlavička
Born 1950 in the Czech Republic Before Hlavička applied himself to glass art, he completed architectural studies. The mentor of Tomáš Hlavička was Pavel Hlava, who is considered to be the co-creator and innovator of the modern movement of glass art. Tomáš Hlavička created, influenced by his experiences of the co-operation with Pavel Hlava, a unique technic. He melts leaf gold and leaf silver into the glass. His roots from architecture in turn, affected his shape forming and both together lets Hlavička develop one of a kind artworks.
Václav Řezáč
Born 1977 in the Czech Republic The work by the artist Václav Řezáč reflects what is stored somewhere in the depth of soul. He does not seek inspiration on the surface of things but in what is hidden under the surface, inside the shape, what is not seen by naked eye, but a man senses through emotions, feelings and heart. Rather than the surface, Václav is interested in the relationship between two subjects/objects, between colors, between various shapes, relations in nature, relations between cultures, between light and darkness, between good and evil, between man and God.
Vladimír Procházka
Born 1947 in the Czech Republic The artist Vladimír Procházka focuses mainly on cooperation with architects in completing both modern and historic interiors and exteriors. His artworks and installations are regarded as some of the best in this field. Equally important are his mold-melted glass sculptures with which he participates in the world’s most prestigious glass art exhibitions and competitions.
Vladimira Klumpar
Born 1966 in the Czech Republic Vladimira Klumpar began her studies at the Specialized School of Glassmaking High School in Zelezny Brod. She completes her studies nearly a decade later at the renowned Academy of Applied Arts in Prague under the tutorship of renowned artist Professor Stanislav Libensky. Klumpar is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Her work has been widely exhibited in Europe and the Americas and is represented in public and private collections on both continents.
