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Doing Glass in Czechoslovakia
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18502 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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4 / 1991 |
1,165 Words |
| Author
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Mavis Guinard
Mavis Guinard, a writer on the arts, lives in Switzerland. |
Artist couples often rival and tear at one another, but Czech artists Jaroslava Brychtova and Stanislav Libensky are a heart-warming exception. When they met, their art started developing and has never ceased to grow. Together, they have given to Bohemian glass tradition a modern sculptural dimension.
In the heart of Europe--in a mountainous land rich with metallic ores that, when fused with man-made glass, could give it the color of jewels--Bohemia was renowned for its skillfully faceted or etched glassware. A far-flung trade peaked in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but in the industrial age exhausted itself in complicated patterns that lacked buyers. Craft schools early in the century brought a promise of renewal. After World War I, the region became a part of Czechoslovakia. Since the end of World War II, Czech craftsmen and artists have brilliantly helped renew the glass industry and recapture Bohemia's ancient supremacy.
One of these artists was Stanislav Libensky. Born in 1921, the son of a skilled blacksmith, Libensky studied glass and painting at the glassmaking schools of Novy Bor and Zelezny Brod, before teaching there. Since the beginning of this century, these schools had formed generations of creative artists inspired by art nouveau, cubist, or geometric forms. From 1963 to 1987, he has headed the glass department of the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague, from which he had graduated. His technical skill led him to exquisitely simple, utilitarian ware of molded or blown glass. His training in fine arts led him to try modern versions of the engraved or enameled decors for which Bohemian glass was once famous.
Meeting Jaroslava Brychtova, the daughter of a teacher at Zelezny Brod, proved determinant. Trained at Prague's Academy of Arts as a glass sculptor, she was encouraged by her father to experiment with ancient Egyptian techniques of cast glass, which she interpreted as small format sculpture or naïve jewelry.
Her first joint work with Libensky was a head-cup of emerald green glass cast in the shape of an oval bowl with a woman's face carved into its underside. Together they continued to explore different ways of working with the head. The most striking of these works is the Kiss, two profiles meeting as one in a freestanding form of red glass.
Larger Pieces
They then adapted their techniques to larger and larger pieces. For the
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