Artist Spotlight: Stanislaw Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova
June 17, 2016
Stanislaw Libensky (1921-2002) was an influential figure in the contemporary glass art world. Born and educated in Czechoslovakia, Libensky was trained first as a painter and only secondly as a glass sculptor.
Under the tutelage of Josef Kaplicky at the Prague Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, Libensky was first exposed to the highly modernist aesthetic that would become a trademark of his glass artwork. In 1953, he became the director of the Specialized School of Glassmaking in the town of Zelezny Brod, renowned for its distinctive and functional glass art. It was there he met his future wife and lifelong collaborator, sculptor Jaroslava Brychtova (b. 1924).
Together, Libensky and Brychtova combined their art specialties to develop a unique mold-melting technique, differentiated from glass art’s other main technique of free-blowing. Their early work predates the studio glass movement of the 1960s, which began in similar collaboration at the Toledo Museum of Art when ceramics professor Harvey Littleton and chemist/engineer Dominick Labino began experimenting with blown glass melted from a small furnace, which transforms the raw materials of glass at a temperature of 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit.
It was not until the 1980s that Stanislaw Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova would be recognized by North American art collectors for the revolutionary work they were doing in Europe. The duo is most notable for incorporating abstract concepts into three-dimensional, Cubist glass design, and for the use of light as a “fourth dimension” in glass sculpture.
In addition to their fine art sculpture, Libensky and Brychtova’s work can also be found among the architecture and public works of Czechoslovakia. In the early 1960s, the couple was commissioned to build two new stained glass windows for the St. Wenceslas Chapel in the St. Vitus Cathedral of Prague.
They also represented their home country at the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels and the Expo ’67 of Montreal, where other future glass artists were deeply impressed by their style.
Throughout their 50-some years of collaboration together, Stanislaw Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova helped to define a new medium and a new means of expression through glass. Their works have withstood the test of time to impress modern art enthusiasts with their blend of geometry and spirituality.
“He was the most important glass artist of our time,” Thomas Buechner, founding director of the Corning Museum of Glass, said of Libensky upon his death in 2002. “He elevated glass to the level of major architectural sculpture.”
