Štěpán Pala – Seeking perfection of form
Key Points
Born 1944 in Zlin, Czechoslovakia // 1959 – 1936 Secondary School of Glass Making Kamenický Šenov // 1969-1975 Academy of Fine Arts, Studio of Glass in Architecture, Bratislava // 2001-2003 Visiting Professor at the University of Sunderland, Great Britain
Public Collections (selection)
Queen Beatrix Collection (Netherlands) // Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava (Slovak Republik) Victoria & Albert Museum, London (Great Britain) // Museum of Glass in Bärnbach, (Austria) // Achilles – Stiftung, Hamburg (Germany) // Gold Prize at the 1998 International Exhibition of Glass in Kanazawa (Japan)
Štěpán Pala was one of the most outstanding students of the department of architectural glass lead by Václav Cigler at Bratislava art academy. Pala trained as a glassmaker, at the glass school in Kamenický Šenov. In 1969 he started attending the academy in Bratislava, where he set up as an independent artist after completing his studies in 1975. 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.
The genesis of Štěpán’s objects involves a gradual, logically developing process. It is the process of transition ranging from the initial reflection on the theme, its development in drawing, through precise and complex technological procedures up to the completed piece in glass. Glass is a medium ideally suited to the sculptor’s imagination. Its mass, defined in relation to the external environment, simultaneously allows the artist to accurately and visibly render the interior in a simple yet complex relationship between many associated elements.
