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Spacial Magazine

Caress And Torment The Soul

By: Ondřej Pokorný Photo: Lasvit, Museum Kampa
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When he paints a line, it’s so straight it sends chills down your spine. When he splash­es col­ors on glass, he defies even the slight­est notions of dec­o­ra­tion. In his work, painter-glass­mak­er Vladimír Kopecký relies on his intu­ition, com­bin­ing a geo­met­ric order with ges­tur­al paint­ing. These are two lev­els, the con­nec­tions of which seem to make no sense. But, accord­ing to this vet­er­an of Czech glass­mak­ing, that’s what life is like – illog­i­cal, incom­pre­hen­si­ble and impos­si­ble to solve. 

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.

Glass deserves much more than schemat­ic dec­o­ra­tive­ness. Each of the vas­es from the Dance of Tur­tles Col­lec­tion is dif­fer­ent. But they all caress and torment.

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.

Kopecký loves yel­low. He claims his orders of yel­low form a great pro­por­tion of the
pro­duc­ers’ turnover.

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.

Geom­e­try, sharp edges, visu­al illu­sions. One of the approach­es to Kopecký’s glass creations.

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.”

From the depths
to the heights
Below the width
I cut my misery
Into the flesh
Of decay­ing reality
And infuse it with
Thor­ough smoke
“And when I get tired of the order, I hit it with a lay­er of paint,” the leg­end of Czech glass art explains.

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.

One sheet of glass fea­tures only a slight touch of a brush, anoth­er sheet is com­plete­ly paint­ed over, the third is near­ly untouched, and the beau­ty of the lines on the fourth only becomes appar­ent once the Mon­sters object is fused in a glass­mak­ing kiln.

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.

The nights are sober
Near­ing the gray morning
Too eager
In the mid­night flood of
Mil­lions of stars
I have a sto­ry to tell
About a key
About paint­ing music
Silence
Why exact­ly about a key?

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.”

There is no pre­cise plan. Only expe­ri­ence and the courage to move on. Accord­ing to Kopecký, this is true both while cre­at­ing vas­es in a glass work­shop and in life in general.

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.

Nine­ty is only a num­ber. Giv­en his age, he sup­pos­ed­ly shouldn’t work as hard, but Kopecký enjoys every day at the glass­works or in the atelier.

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.

What did glass whis­pered to me?
It is finished.
At the dis­man­tled street
Recoil­ing house num­bers burn
At the rub­ble dump
Halved car­na­tion
Invites green grace
Among its petals

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.

Scroll to top ↑
← Immersion Into Nature
Getting To Know The Campanas →
Valdimír Kopecký
Glass deserves much more than schematic decorativeness. Each of the vases from the Dance of Turtles Collection is different. But they all caress and torment.
Kopecký loves yellow. He claims his orders of yellow form a great proportion of the producers’ turnover.
Geometry, sharp edges, visual illusions. One of the approaches to Kopecký’s glass creations.
“And when I get tired of the order, I hit it with a layer of paint,” the legend of Czech glass art explains.
One sheet of glass features only a slight touch of a brush, another sheet is completely painted over, the third is nearly untouched, and the beauty of the lines on the fourth only becomes apparent once the Monsters object is fused in a glassmaking kiln.
There is no precise plan. Only experience and the courage to move on. According to Kopecký, this is true both while creating vases in a glass workshop and in life in general.
Ninety is only a number. Given his age, he supposedly shouldn’t work as hard, but Kopecký enjoys every day at the glassworks or in the atelier.

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