December Issue 2001
Glass Sculpture Installed at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design in Charlotte, NC
The first American commission for an architectural work by Czechoslovakian glass artists Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova has been installed at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design in Uptown Charlotte, NC. Husband and wife, and artistic collaborators for nearly 50 years, their pioneering use of cast glass on an architectural scale influenced the course of 20th century sculpture. Their coveted glass sculptures are in the permanent collections of major museums throughout the world.
Relations, a monumental glass wall (380 x 400 x 7 centimeters, approximately 6,600 lbs.) has been installed by a Czech installation team in the entryway to the museum's permanent collection off the museum atrium. The translucent wall features two intersecting elliptical forms, one concave and one convex, on ten cast glass panels. The work was commissioned for the Mint Museum of Craft + Design by Dr. Dudley and Lisa Anderson of Wilson, NC.
The craft museum remained open to allow the public the opportunity to view the installation process where ten 650-pound cast glass panels were hung together within 1/8 inch tolerance of each other. Davis Steel & Iron Company and Rodgers Builders donated and installed special steel beams from which the glass wall was hang. "The concept for Relations is that it serves a role as a transmitter of information," said Mark Leach, Director of the Mint Museum of Craft + Design. "It's effect will reflect information into a visual matrix that hints of what is beyond the wall upon entering, as well as connecting environmental elements together."
The contrast between convex and concave surfaces create internal kinetic effects of both light and color from the surroundings. The optical properties of the glass are not used to mirror the environment in distortions, as the desired effects are generated from inside the form. After the break-up of the Hapsburg Empire and the founding of the democratic country of Czechoslovakia in 1918, state leaders were determined to make Bohemian glass a national symbol of cultural achievement. Enhanced education and collaboration between artists, designers and industry achieved the goal. Remarkably, Czechoslovakia's achievements in glass artistry was maintained through 50 years of later German and Soviet totalitarian rule from 1939-1989.
Explained Paul Perrot, former director of The Corning Museum of Glass, of the seeming contradiction after a 1962 visit: "Here was a society extraordinarily oppressed, every gesture had to be guarded. And yet glass design, textiles and ceramics had a tremendous sense of freedom. The system allowed these artists to break through barriers with the help of government and the help of industry in a manner that none of their colleagues in the United States had been able to obtain. The astonishing contradiction could only be explained because the ruling figures probably did not understand that this non-verbal and tactile non-representational expression was really a cry for liberty."
Libensky and Brychtova met in 1954 and soon began to collaborate on cast sculptures made at the Zelezny Brod Glassworks' architectural glass facility. From the beginning, their projects aimed at translating the illusion of paint into light and space. Through her sensitive modeling of form and her understanding of the physical qualities of material, Brychtova transformed her husband's design sketches literally into "color in space". Only after they had created drawings and models to assist in their contemplation of space, and had determined a solution to a particular problem, did glass formation enter the picture. The sophistication of their sculpture, due to control over the material as opposed to the spontaneity or "happy accidents" of American studio glass artists, had repercussions in the world of studio glass.
Czechoslovakians demonstrated to the world at the 1967 Expo in Montreal that glass had potential for sculpture not possible in other materials. Dale Chihuly recalled, "I first saw the work of Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova at the World's Fair in Montreal. They had produced, without a doubt, the most extraordinary installation of the entire Fair. As a glass student, it was the most impressive thing that I had ever seen."
Despite their work being highly sought by museums throughout the world, Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova had been given only one solo exhibition of their work in Czechoslovakia in 1962 and were not granted another in Prague until three months before the Velvet Revolution in 1989. As the artists' international prominence grew in the 1970s and 1980s, life became more difficult as travel was restricted. A small retrospective was held in Riihimäki, Finland in 1983, despite official Czechoslovakian efforts to impede it.
The eventual influence of Libensky and Brychtova on glass art outside their country was profound. Their reputation grew even though little of their sculpture had been published or publicly exhibited outside of Czechoslovakia.
"Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova are artists whose work has been unwaveringly concerned with light and space for over 40 years," wrote Susanne Frantz, Curator of 20th Century Glass at The Corning Museum of Art in the catalogue for a 1994 retrospective. "The beauty of their work is always subservient to their ideas."
A computer-generated illustration of Relations is currently posted on the museum's web site at (http://www.mintmuseum.org) under Mint Museum of Craft + Design exhibitions.
For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at 704/337-2000 or check the museum web site at the above URL.
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