With 155 pieces from the United States, Europe and Venice, Venice and American Studio Glass features an extraordinary selection of glass works by American artists and designers and examines for the first time the influence of the Venetian aesthetics and traditional glass-working techniques on American Studio Glass, from the 1960s to today.
Venice and American Studio Glass, curated by Tina Oldknow and William Warmus, both former curators of modern and contemporary glass at the Corning Museum of Glass in New York, is the eighteenth exhibition of LE STANZE DEL VETRO. Showcasing the diversity of contemporary American art and design in glass, the exhibition features works that are beautiful and challenging, traditional and ground-breaking. The show will be open to the public, on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, from 6 September 2020 to 10 January 2021.
Gathering 155 outstanding glass vessels, sculptures and installations created by 60 American and Venetian artists, this exhibition is the first to closely examine the influences of traditional Venetian glass-working techniques, as well as the Venetian aesthetic, on American Studio Glass from the 1960s to the present.
The goal of the mid- to late-20th Century American Studio Glass movement was to free glassmaking from industrial processes and to develop glass in the artist’s studio as a material for contemporary art. Some artists took the new studio glassblowing in experimental and innovative directions in the late 1960s, yet most Americans were hampered by their lack of technical knowledge.
By 1960, glassblowing had become industrialized in the United States and many skills were lost, so American Studio Glass artists looked to Europe, and especially to Venice and the glassblowers on the island of Murano, for guidance. What ensued was a “love affair” with Venetian glass- working that, by the end of the 1990s, had spread throughout the United States and worldwide.
Among the most significant pieces showcased in Venice and American Studio Glass, a place of honor belongs to Laguna Murano Chandelier, the spectacular glass work created in Murano in 1996 by Dale Chihuly together with the masters Pino Signoretto and Lino Tagliapietra and exhibited - for the first time outside the United States - in the Carnelutti Hall of the Giorgio Cini Foundation. Tangible testimony of the long collaboration and contamination that took place between American and Venetian artists in contemporary American glass, the Laguna Murano Chandelier was created for the “Chihuly Over Venice” project, which consisted of a series of large glass sculptures installed around the city of Venice: although the chandelier was made for the occasion, it has never been exhibited outside the United States.
The chandelier, consists of five elements, two hanging from the ceiling and three mounted on fixed armatures, incorporating sculptural elements, which evoke the Venice lagoon, such as a crab, a jellyfish, a starfish, an eel, an octopus, a pufferfish, sharks, a mermaid and the god of the sea, Neptune, in addition to the explosion of amber-coloured tendril-like candelabra that make up the entire volume.
Venice and American Studio Glass demonstrates the powerful, enduring and versatile legacy of Venetian glassmaking in America by exploring the impact of Venice on contemporary American art in glass. The exhibition recounts how American and Venetian maestri—primarily Lino Tagliapietra and Pino Signoretto—renewed creativity and vibrancy of a historic craft language, and further developed it to make superb works of art.
Many of the artists included in the exhibition have had a profound influence on the development of American Studio Glass, either by teaching and working with other artists and by using traditional Venetian glass-working techniques to make unique new works.
Pioneering artists such as Dale Chihuly and Benjamin Moore traveled to Venice, learned Venetian techniques, and then invited Venetian maestros to the United States to teach. While Chihuly made some Venetian-inspired series over his long and prolific career, Moore’s body of work focuses specifically on Venetian ideas. Richard Marquis, who also traveled to Venice, developed entirely new uses for the Venetian mosaic technique, known as murrine, for his American flag-inspired objects, crazy quilt teapots, and “Marquiscarpa” vessels.
Venice and American Studio Glass is also part of the fourth edition of The Venice Glass Week, the international festival devoted to artistic glass, which will take place in Venice, Murano and Mestre from 5 to 13 September 2020.
This year’s edition will have a special title – hashtag: #TheHeartOfGlass, a focus on Murano and the “making” of glass, with the aim of helping to relaunch and revitalize the glass sector – primarily that of Murano – after months of closure due to Covid-19.
The initiative is supported by the Municipality of Venice, the Fondazione Musei Civici, the Fondazione Giorgio Cini-LE STANZE DEL VETRO, the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti and by the Consorzio Promovetro Murano, the most important association in the sector.
For more visit: lestanzedelvetro.org
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