The Museum of Glass and Jewellery in Jablonec nad Nosou, with the cooperation of the Czech Centre in Sofia, will display 25 unique art glass objects at the National Gallery, from 21 April – 29 May 2016.
According to the curator, Petr Novэ, the artists are emblematic figures of Czech glass art from different generations—representatives of higher and secondary specialised schools, self-employed teachers, and founders. This selection is complemented by objects created by students specialising in ‘Glass’ at the New Bulgarian University.
The goal of the exhibition is not only to present individual, contemporary Czech glass, but also the secondary and higher education in glass art in the Czech Republic, which, in its systematism and consistency has no comparison worldwide. This applies both to technical and to artistic education. Four generations of glass artists work in the schools, most of them with a worldwide reputation, regularly showing their works at exhibitions in the Czech Republic and abroad. However, their joint presentation in one venue not only accentuates their pedagogical activity but also offers a new perspective on education in glass art in the Czech Republic and on Czech art glass itself. That is why there are works on display in this exhibition by the founders of Czech interior glass who have influenced today’s generation of glass artists. There are also self-employed teachers who exhibit Czech glass art and craft around the world. Also invited are artists whose original approach to glass is so interesting today that they cannot be overlooked. Each artist is represented with one artwork.
‘Czech glass and Czech glass maker are world-famous expressions to which, as of the mid-20th. century, the expression Czech glass artist was added. The beginning established a powerful generation of young, enthusiastic and artistically daring creators whose presentations at the world expositions in Brussels (1958), Montreal (1967) and Osaka (1970) were impressive. All this contributed greatly to the collecting of Czech interior glass abroad—a kind of crossing of the ideological boundaries of the then bipolar world. Czech artists and their glass objects began to travel the world and became an exemplar; and students from other countries directed themselves to Czechoslovakia. The contemporary phenomenon of the Czech glass school was born.
‘The founders of Czech interior glass, Stanislav Libenský (who works with Jaroslava Brychtová), René Roubíček and Vladimír Kopecký, do not choose creative solitude but, rather, as pedagogues and lecturers, endeavour to convey to others their concepts of glass, which, however, are quite different. That is the very reason that Czech glass education, which, in its comprehensiveness, has not had and does not have any analogue in the world, gives the artistic world several generations of creators who are also engaged in pedagogical activity today.
‘The NO LIMITS Project is dedicated to the essence of this diverse Czech creative approach to glass. It demonstrates this through the works of the founders, the teachers from secondary and higher schools, and the lecturers who teach and present their glass art abroad. The aim is also to show the Czech Republic as a promised land of glass in the centre of Europe, an open and constantly developing artistic country, in which four world-renowned generations of artists and teachers in glass, work. Anyone who wants to create glass must have the best teachers and choice of approach. The Czech glass school offers an abundance of both conditions, no matter what the choice of people may be,” said Petr Novэ.