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Stanislav Libenský (27 March 1921 – 24 February 2002) and Jaroslava Brychtová (18 July 1924 – 8 April 2020) were Czech
contemporary art Contemporary art is a term used to describe the art of today, generally referring to art produced from the 1970s onwards. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a ...
ists. Their works are included in many major
modern art Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradit ...
collections, such as the
Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
and the Victoria & Albert Museum. Jaroslava Brychtová, a sculptor, and Stanislav Libenský, originally a painter and later a
glass art Glass art refers to individual works of art that are substantially or wholly made of glass. It ranges in size from monumental works and installation pieces to wall hangings and windows, to works of art made in studios and factories, including gl ...
ist, met in 1954. They married in 1963 and worked together until Libenský's death. Libenský painted and sketched the designs, and Brychtová made clay sculptures from his designs. Since Libenský's death, Brychtová continued to produce castings. Their work is characterised by simple block shapes infused with subtle colours and nuances.


Education and artistic partnership

Stanislav Libenský began his study of
glass Glass is an amorphous (non-crystalline solid, non-crystalline) solid. Because it is often transparency and translucency, transparent and chemically inert, glass has found widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in window pane ...
in 1937 at the Specialized School of Glassmaking in Nový Bor,
Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...
, a region encompassing the Czech-German border called the
Sudetenland The Sudetenland ( , ; Czech and ) is a German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans. These German speakers had predominated in the border districts of Bohe ...
. When the German army occupied the Sudetenland in 1938, Libenský moved first to the school at
Železný Brod Železný Brod (; ) is a town in Jablonec nad Nisou District in the Liberec Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 6,000 inhabitants. The Trávníky district of the town has well preserved folk architecture and is protected as a Cultural monume ...
, and later to Prague Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design (VŠUP), from which he graduated in 1944. His first notable series in glass, created in Nový Bor between 1945 and 1948, were thin crystal vessels, delicately etched and enameled with themes from the Bible and
Renaissance art Renaissance art (1350 – 1620) is the painting, sculpture, and decorative arts of the period of European history known as the Renaissance, which emerged as a distinct style in Italy in about AD 1400, in parallel with developments which occurr ...
. In 1948 Libenský returned to VŠUP, where he studied under Josef Kaplický, a painter, sculptor and architect who headed the school of painting on glass. Through his dynamic teaching style and modernist ideas, Kaplický had a tremendous influence on his students and thus on the independence of glass as an art form in Czechoslovakia. In 1953 Libenský returned to Železný Brod to become the director of the Specialized School of Glassmaking. It was during that time that he met Jaroslava Brychtová, the daughter of the school's co-founder, Jaroslav Brychta. Jaroslava Brychtová began to experiment with casting and carving glass in the late 1940s. She founded the Center for Architectural Glass at the Specialized School of Glassmaking in 1950. Like Libenský, Brychtová studied at VŠUP. The war interrupted her education, but she later finished her studies with a concentration in sculpture. Her teachers were Karel Štipl (from 1945 to 1951) and Jan Lauda (from 1947 to 1950).Libenský website
Accessed 3/31/10
Jaroslava Brychtová's career at the Specialized School of Glassmaking in Železný Brod spanned 1950 to 1984. The couple began their long collaboration in 1954, when Brychtová created a sculptural glass bowl modeled after a sketch of a bowl-shaped head that Libenský had made. According to Libenský, the two worked well together because he was trained as a painter, and she as a sculptor. Libenský and Brychtová married in 1963.


1958 Brussels Expo

The Czechoslovakian pavilion at the EXPO '58 in Brussels garnered attention for its modern architectural design, its film, acting and ballet presentations, it was Czech glass that attracted the attention of the judges. The entry designed by Libenský and Brychtová, "Animal Reliefs" (later known as " Zoomorphic Stones"), were cast glass "stones". These were smooth on the obverse; on the reverse, animals inspired by the cave paintings of Altamira and
Lascaux Lascaux ( , ; , "Lascaux Cave") is a network of caves near the village of Montignac, Dordogne, Montignac, in the Departments of France, department of Dordogne in southwestern France. Over 600 Parietal art, parietal cave painting, wall paintin ...
were cast in negative low relief. The effect presented by this, when viewed through the smooth surface of the glass, is of a three-dimensional form captured within its depths. Incorporated into a concrete wall in the pavilion's "Glass" gallery, "Animal Reliefs" was awarded a Grand Prix. While the original work did not survive, a recreation of it was installed in the
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in Geneva.Klein, 2001, p. 118 In developing the negative modeling technique employed in "Animal Reliefs", Brychtová and Libenský created the foundation on which the majority of their later sculptural work was based.


Prague Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design (VŠUP)

Josef Kaplický's death in 1962 left a void at VŠUP that was filled by Libenský, who was appointed a professor in the glass department in 1963. Libenský was an excellent teacher who respected the tradition of glass in Czechoslovakia while furthering his own ideas about the modern direction of glass art. His career at the academy lasted nearly one-quarter of a century. During that time, despite the opposition of the Communist government that had taken hold of the country in the late 1940s, Libenský was able not only to influence two generations of glass artists through his teaching but also, through international lecturing and exhibition of his and Jaroslava Brychtová's works, build international interest in modern Czech glass art. Notable students of Professor Libenský include
František Janák František Janák (born 1 June 1951) is a Czech glass artist. He creates glass sculptures and commission works, and also does series production design for different Czech glassworks. Biography Janák was born on 1 June 1951 in Havlíčkův Bro ...
, Marian Karel, Ivana Mašitová, Yan Zoritchak (Ján Zoričák), and Alena Bílková.


Architectural commissions

Much of Libenský and Brychtová's architectural work was done for buildings in Czechoslovakia, including two windows, created for the St. Wenceslas Chapel in Prague's St. Vitus Cathedral. Built in the fourteenth century, the historic chapel was reconstructed by the Czech government between 1961 and 1964. Libenský and Brychtová were selected by competition to replace the chapel's original stained glass windows, which dated from 1912 to 1913. The artists created an abstract design for the windows that, in its modern simplicity, departed from the ornate, early sixteenth-century decoration of the chapel. To relate the new to the old, Libenský and Brychtová used the muted grey-brown, grey-green and pink hues in the chapel's frescoes as the predominant colors in their windows. Outside of Czechoslovakia their architectural glass work was seen in World's Fair exhibitions and Czech Embassies. At Expo '67 in
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, Canada, they created three large sculptures for the Czechoslovakian Pavilion's "Hall of Century and Traditions". These were "Blue Concretion", "Sun of the Century", and "Large Conus". According to
Corning Museum of Glass The Corning Museum of Glass is a museum in Corning (city), New York, Corning, New York, United States, dedicated to the art, history, and science of glass. It was founded in 1951 by Corning Incorporated, Corning Glass Works and currently has a ...
curator Tina Oldknow, these large-scale sculptures in glass were "a revelation" to the American Studio Glass artists who saw them, including Harvey Littleton, Dale Chihuly and Marvin Lipofsky.


Honors and awards

Libenský was awarded honorary doctorates by the
Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public university, public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City, London, White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design uni ...
in London in 1994, the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in 2001, and together with Brychtova, by the University of Sunderland in 1999 and the
Rhode Island School of Design The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase th ...
in 2000. In 1985 he was named a Chevalier of the
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by the
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in Paris, France. He won the Herder Prize from the
University of Vienna The University of Vienna (, ) is a public university, public research university in Vienna, Austria. Founded by Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, Duke Rudolph IV in 1365, it is the oldest university in the German-speaking world and among the largest ...
, Austria, in 1975. With his wife and collaborative partner, Jaroslava Brychtová, Libenský was accorded a number of honors. The pair were presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from Urbanglass in
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, and the Glass Art Society in 1997 and 1996, respectively. They won the Bavarian State Prize and gold medal at the Internationale Handwerksmesse in
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, Germany, in 1995 and 1967, and received Gold Medal awards from Internationales Kunsthandwerk in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1969 and at the VIII Bienal de
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, Brazil, in 1965. Libenský and Brychtová were presented with the Rakow Award for Excellence in Glass from the
Corning Museum of Glass The Corning Museum of Glass is a museum in Corning (city), New York, Corning, New York, United States, dedicated to the art, history, and science of glass. It was founded in 1951 by Corning Incorporated, Corning Glass Works and currently has a ...
in 1984. They received the 1958 Grand Prize at
Expo 58 Expo 58, also known as the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (; ), was a world's fair held on the Heysel/Heizel Plateau in Brussels, Belgium, from 17 April to 19 October 1958. It was the first major world's fair registered under the Bureau Internati ...
in Brussels, Belgium.


Collections

The work of Libenský and Brychtová has been collected by public institutions world-wide, including the
Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
, New York, NY; Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth; Prague National Museum, Prague, Czech Republic; Cafesjian Museum of Art, Yerevan, Armenia; Museum Bellrive, Zürich, Switzerland; Finnish Glass Museum,
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;
Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...
, London; Hokkaidō Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo, Japan;
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo The , also known as MOMAT, is the foremost museum collecting and exhibiting modern Japanese art. The museum, in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan, is known for its collection of 20th-century art and includes Western-style and ''Nihonga'' artists. It has a bra ...
, Japan;
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam The Rijksmuseum () is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history and is located in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museumplein, Museum Square in the stadsdeel, borough of Amsterdam-Zuid, Amsterdam South, ...
;
Corning Museum of Glass The Corning Museum of Glass is a museum in Corning (city), New York, Corning, New York, United States, dedicated to the art, history, and science of glass. It was founded in 1951 by Corning Incorporated, Corning Glass Works and currently has a ...
, Corning, New York;
Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961 ...
, Los Angeles, California, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio; and Museum Jan van der Togt, Amstelveen, the Netherlands;Waldrich, Joachim, "Who's Who in Contemporary Glass Art", Joachim Waldrich Verlag, Munich, Germany, 1993 p. 314 Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, France and
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.


References


External links


Short biography and photographs of Libenský / Brychtová works

Corning Museum of Glass


Further reading

* Thomas S. Buechner and William Warmus, "Czechoslovakian Diary: 1980." Corning: The Corning Museum of Glass, 1981. Chronicles the authors' visit to the Libenský-Brychtová studio in July, 1980. * William Warmus, "The Art of Libensky and Brychtova." The first Rakow Award lecture for Excellence in the Art of Glass, October 1984, at The Corning Museum of Glass. Published in Neues Glas magazine in 1985 and the Corning Museum of Glass New Glass Review in 1985. * Robert Kehlmann, ''The Inner Light: Sculpture by Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová'', University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2002. * Robert Kehlmann, “A Talk with Stanislav Libenský,” ''Glass Art Society Journal'', 1981. {{DEFAULTSORT:Libensky, Stanislav, Brychtova, Jaroslava Czech artists Czech glass artists Academic staff of the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague Married couples Art duos Recipients of Medal of Merit (Czech Republic) Herder Prize recipients People from Mladá Boleslav District People from Železný Brod Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague alumni