Caress And Torment The Soul

His work is an adven­ture. Look­ing at the huge can­vas­es, you don’t know which way is up or down. You take one of his glass vas­es in your hand and feel anx­i­ety, melan­choly, as well as desire. And should you get to watch Vladimír Kopecký work, your jaw would drop see­ing the wild ges­tures tran­si­tion­ing to silence, his infa­mous ever-present mess, as well as his vital­i­ty. Not only that, you would sure­ly be soaked with paint from head to toe. Like­ly yel­low. Because that’s his favorite.

TO CARRESS AS WELL AS
TORMENT THE SOUL

A storm, as well as an absolute peace. In his work, Vladimír Kopecký invokes both extremes. “I admire painters such as Mon­dri­an and Rothko, who were able to main­tain a sin­gle line of work their whole lives. I wouldn’t be able to han­dle that. When I feel that I’m begin­ning to repeat myself, I pre­fer to look for a new path.” Thus the Czech artist describes his inter­nal tension.

We’re look­ing at a hun­dred of his large-scale can­vas­es from the last two years in his Prague ate­lier. “They say I shouldn’t work so much any­more but it seems to me that I’ve nev­er been busier,” says Kopecký with a smile. He recent­ly cel­e­brat­ed his nineti­eth birth­day. The can­vas­es fea­ture com­bi­na­tions of geo­met­ric shapes with splash­es of blue, green and, in par­tic­u­lar, yel­low. The ratio­nal­ly built motifs ver­sus rad­i­cal ges­tures. He prefers to cre­ate in motion, lay­ing the can­vas on the floor or a glass object on a table, cir­cling around it with a can of paint and dra­mat­i­cal­ly spilling it all around. If he picks up a brush at all, it’s only for a few strokes. Then he thought­less­ly toss­es it out – or makes it direct­ly a part of the paint­ing. “A prac­ti­cal task such as clean­ing the paint brush would only unnec­es­sar­i­ly dis­turb my con­cen­tra­tion,” the artist explains.

His style of work in many ways resem­bles the action expres­sion­ism of Jack­son Pol­lock, Franz Kline or Willem de Koon­ing. Yet he imme­di­ate­ly adds an essen­tial expla­na­tion of his approach to art: “When­ev­er I get tired of expres­sive­ness, I glad­ly come back to more sober motifs. I let off steam, calm down. It’s impor­tant for me to move on. If an artist is afraid to take risks and wor­ries what the arbiters of good taste will say about their work, it’s a waste of time. I want to come up with some­thing orig­i­nal, so that my work awak­ens emo­tions and fan­ta­sy in peo­ple. So that it both caress­es and torments.”

AN ICON OF CZECH GLASS
AND PAINTING

The empha­sis on caress­ing and tor­ment­ing the soul is true for both Kopecký the painter, and Kopecký the glass­mak­er. “These are com­mu­ni­cat­ing ves­sels. The approach is the same, but the glass objects enable the pro­jec­tion of emo­tions, col­ors, geom­e­try, as well as chaos, into spaces while adding the effect of light and shad­ows.” Kopecký’s career cov­ers over sev­en­ty years now. Aside from glass and paint­ing, it includes mosaics and, in recent years, also the poet­ry he writes at night.

He began mak­ing glass in the 1940 s at schools in North Bohemia. Then he moved to Prague, con­tin­u­ing his stud­ies at Acad­e­my of Arts, Archi­tec­ture and Design. His work was heav­i­ly influ­enced by meet­ing renowned glass­mak­ers and artists such as René Roubíček and Stanislav Liben­ský, as well as his long-term teacher, Josef Kaplický. “It was only at the Acad­e­my that I began con­scious­ly doing abstract art. Under Kaplický’s guid­ance, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute to a mon­u­men­tal glass instal­la­tion for the Milano Tri­en­nale 1957. At that time, the abstract approach was direct­ly in the assign­ment. I nev­er stopped being fas­ci­nat­ed by large can­vas­es or objects,” he adds.

In terms of influ­ences on his work, we shouldn’t omit two aspects of his per­son­al life. The first is that he has a twin and per­haps this may explain his dri­ve to be dif­fer­ent from oth­ers. The sec­ond is that he suf­fered a seri­ous injury as a twen­ty-year-old glass cut­ter. “Dur­ing the school prac­tice, the cut­ting ring shat­tered and broke bones in my face. They say that five peo­ple out of a hun­dred would sur­vive such an acci­dent. My face was deformed and I thought that was the end. But at least I had a sto­ry to tell the girls.” Per­haps it’s a short­cut but one can­not but notice that his glass­mak­ing work shows par­al­lels with the expe­ri­ence of hav­ing his face deformed.

TRULY UGLY GLASS?
NO WAY

A year after the Milan show, he achieved great suc­cess at the World Expo in Brus­sels. Along with Adriena Šimo­tová and Fran­tišek Burant, they received a gold medal and con­tributed to the renown of the leg­endary Czechoslo­vak pavil­ion. The year was 1958, Kopecký was a mere 26 years old and sens­ing that the time to dis­tance him­self from the dec­o­ra­tive esthet­ic had arrived. “I began despis­ing the tra­di­tion­al esthet­ic,” he recalls, “I real­ized that glass can­not be glo­ri­fied, that it’s main­ly the means to achiev­ing a goal, not a dec­o­ra­tion. This is why it can be han­dled in con­tra­dic­tion to con­ven­tions, thus also in an ugly manner.”

Upon clos­er exam­i­na­tion of his glass­mak­ing out­put, it’s appar­ent that the word ‘ugly’ is meant more in the sense of ‘non-tra­di­tion­al’ or ‘unusu­al.’ His glass objects are every­thing but ugly. This is evi­dent from the inter­est of pri­vate col­lec­tors, as well as the plac­ing of his works in over thir­ty sig­nif­i­cant col­lec­tions of mod­ern art and glass world­wide (includ­ing Corn­ing, Toya­ma, as well as the Nation­al Gallery in Prague).

His excep­tion­al approach to glass is appar­ent from ear­li­er works from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, notable for their geo­met­ric forms and opti­cal illu­sions, as well as from glass objects of recent years, where the artist for the first time com­bined geom­e­try with expres­sive­ness and col­ors. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true in case of the Dance of Tur­tles vase col­lec­tion and the Mon­sters series of glass objects that he designed and per­son­al­ly paint­ed for Lasvit.

How does Kopecký cre­ate such mas­ter­pieces? At first glance, he sim­ply pours col­ors over a glass object equal­ly instinc­tive­ly as when he paints on can­vas. Yet, this seem­ing­ly triv­ial act requires a deep under­stand­ing of tech­nolo­gies, glass, col­ors, as well as great courage and deter­mi­na­tion to push the bound­aries of abstract and spe­cif­ic expres­sion. In his works, these two poles blend, come fur­ther apart and clos­er, until they final­ly become one.

In glass soli­taires named Car­a­vans of Mon­sters March Through the Silent Marsh he com­bines lay­ers of strict­ly geo­met­ric sheets of glass with broad col­or ges­tures. Some lay­ers are paint­ed over near­ly entire­ly, oth­ers con­tain just a stain of col­or. “When you do all this for sev­en­ty years, the col­or almost pours itself on the vase,” the artist explains, laugh­ing. “I don’t have a spe­cif­ic plan dur­ing the work, I’m only mak­ing sure I don’t repeat myself.” As soon as he sens­es that his work shows too many sim­i­lar­i­ties, he imme­di­ate­ly leaves the shape or com­bi­na­tion of col­ors and comes up with new ones. There­fore, each piece is a true orig­i­nal, breath­tak­ing, caress­ing, tor­ment­ing. Exact­ly as the artist intended.

Pro­fes­sor Kopecký is among the leg­ends of Czech glass. As a painter, a graph­ic design­er and a glass artist, he’s com­plet­ed hun­dreds of works – objects, per­for­mance or instal­la­tions with­in archi­tec­ture. Despite his ripe age of 90 years, he is still very active. Between 1990 and 2018, he head­ed the Glass Ate­lier at the Acad­e­my of Arts, Archi­tec­ture and Design in Prague and raised a num­ber of artists. His work is char­ac­ter­ized by the dichoto­my of unbound­ed expres­sive­ness and the desire for a geo­met­ric order, con­stant­ly oscil­lat­ing between these two approach­es. Among his most sig­nif­i­cant suc­cess­es are the Gold Medal at Expo 58 in Brus­sels, a pre­sen­ta­tion at Glass 84 in Japan, where he received The Bridge­stone Muse­um Prize, as well as Holst Glas Pri­js from the Groen­eveld Gallery and the Min­istry of Cul­ture Award from 2009, for con­tri­bu­tion in the area of visu­al arts. He lives and works in Prague and Nový Bor, North Bohemia.