CGD

"The glass I make does not want to be any art but, instead, a means of looking and observing. Glass is truly an exciting material it is both a mass and non-mass, it is as real as unreal. It is as peculiar as exceeding its own limits, and thus questioning our sensual experience."

Václav Cigler

The pioneering oeuvre of Václav Cigler moves along the boundary between art and design, often defying any classification and asking radical questions as to the meaning of material and things and their natural and human character. Václav Cigler was the first one in the Czech lands who began viewing jewellery as a means of both physical and social communication and pursued experimenting with inflatable structures and plastic materials. He discovered the potential of optical glass for the field of glass sculpture on a global scale. As a pedagogue lecturing at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, he was the founder of professional training in the glassmaking profession in Slovakia and his example inspired and formed numerous Slovak artists and designers. His remarkable achievements include his lighting projects; he designed and, with a group of academy pedagogues, co-realized the first Czechoslovak programmable lighting object for the Slovak National Theatre. He is the author of many interventions in the Prague subway, a large part of which unfortunately did not survive. His early realizations in the sphere of applied arts cannot deny the influence of his teacher at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague, Josef Kaplický, who passed on the sense of perseverance in adhering to the highest creative standards not only to him but also many other students.

Iva Knobloch