Lino Tagliapietra (born 1934) is an Italian glass artist originally from Venice, who has also worked extensively in the United States. As a teacher and mentor, he has played a key role in the international exchange of glassblowing processes and techniques between the principal American centers and his native Murano, "but his influence is also apparent in China, Japan, and Australia—and filters far beyond any political or geographic boundaries." [1]
Tagliapietra was born August 10, 1934, in an apartment on the Rio dei Vetri (which translates litteraly in "glass canal", or more broadly in "glass street" considering the intense use of waterways in the Venetian Lagoon as means for transport of goods and people) in Murano, Italy, [2] an island with a history of glass-making that dates from 1291. It provided an ideal educational environment for Tagliapietra to develop his techniques and glass artistry. On June 16, 1946, at the age of 12, he was apprenticed to the glass maestro Archimede Seguso. [2] [3] He began in the Galliano Ferro factory as a water carrier and after two years was allowed to participate in glass manufacturing for the first time, applying ribbing to a single piece. [2] He educated himself in modern art and at the Venice Biennales saw the work of Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Ellsworth Kelly. For the history or glass art he used the local resources of the Murano Glass Museum, and his attempts to recreate historical models expanded his vocabulary as well. [2] Nine years later, at the age of 25, he earned the rank of maestro. [2] He interrupted his years of training to complete his compulsory service in the Italian military in 1952-54. [4] On 13 September 1959 he married Lina Ongaro, whose family had been involved in Venetian glass production for centuries. [4]
For the next 25 years Tagliapietra worked in association with several of Murano's most important glass factories, including Vetreria Galliano Ferro, Venini & C., La Murrina, Effetre International, where he was Artistic and Technical Director from 1976 to 1989, [5] and EOS Design nel Vetro. [3] At Murrina he developed his "Saturn" design, which became his "personal emblem". [6] His influence on the American art glass studio movement is primarily attributed to his colleague Dale Chihuly. In 1968 Chihuly visited Murano, where he gave Tagliapietra studio time to develop his own pieces. He taught Tagliapietra his techniques, which Tagliapietra taught to other glass maestri, including Pino Signoretto, and Tagliapietra taught Chihuly the Venetians' secrets in turn. [2] A 2001 film documents this collaboration: Chihuly and the Masters of Venice. [7]
Tagliapietra taught workshops at La Scuola Internazionale del Vetro (Murano) in 1976, 1978, and 1981, [4] [8] where artists and blowers worked on an equal footing. [6] In 1979 and 1980, he taught at the Pilchuck Glass School in Washington state, [4] which initiated an ongoing exchange of knowledge between the Italian maestri and American glass artists, groups that in the past had guarded their techniques as trade secrets. He has returned to Seattle and Pilchuk repeatedly. [2]
In the 1980s, Tagliapietra transitioned from traveling, teaching, and designing for commercial glass manufacturers to creating individual pieces of art as an independent studio artist. He had his first solo show at Traver Gallery in Seattle in 1990. [2] His technical resources continuously expanded to combine modern experimentation "carving, blowing, caning, layering, casing, and trailing along with the elaborate Italian tricks so sought after for centuries: battuto, zanfirico, filigrano, reticello, pulegoso, martelé, inciso and incalmo..." [2] He has emphasized his own independent approach to design. He told one interviewer: "I'm totally open. I think that what I like to do the most is research. I don't want to represent Venetian technique only–even though I was born with it.... Your style is what you are. My older work has a different spirit and my expression has changed." [2]
Though colored glasses have been available since the 1970s, Tagliapietra has continued to create his own colors and use them almost exclusively in his own work. He has said they allow him to maintain control and that they are "softer, more human, more ... Venetian". [9]
According to Rosa Barovier Mentasti, a leading historian of glass: [10]
He was taught and has taught himself the glass art in light of the particular Venetian sensibility to glass, aimed at appreciating its characteristics as an absolutely unique material that can be melted, blown and molded when hot.... In his work, it is also difficult, if not impossible, to separate the design stage from the technical-experimental, in that he thinks in glass; that is, he conceives the work not only in terms of its aesthetic qualities but simultaneously in the methods of its production.
In Giovanni Sarpelon's view, Tagliapietra has "a close and almost symbiotic rapport with glass" that erases the distinction between the craftsman and the artist. There is no question in his work "whether the fact that a work is made of glass is purely incidental or whether it is essential to its creation." [6] While he may sketch designs in advance, his approach is to seek "spontaneous perfection" during the glassblowing process. As one profiler has written, "most of his decisions are made in front of the furnace". [11]
In 1998, he undertook a challenging project with Steuben Glass Works that required him to work without color usingthe unfamiliar batch glass that Steuben has developed for its own production. [12]
In 2008, Art Guide Northwest reported: [2]
By adopting a boundary-free, global attitude about skill sharing and the evolution of artistic vision in glass, Tagliapietra became the single most important living figure for glass: his friend Dale Chihuly freely called him "the greatest glassblower in the world."
The Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arte mounted the first exhibition of his work in his homeland in the spring of 2011, a retrospective of his entire career including works from as far back as the 1950s. Its center gallery held Avventura, a large black shadowbox displaying a collection of over 100 avventurina vessels made of glass mixed with copper particles. According to GLASS Quarterly, "the gilded vases and pitchers emulate Roman amphorae, vessel forms far older than the Murano glassblowing tradition and its challenging avventurina technique." Another 16 pieces under the title Masai d’Oro "inspired by the deeply symbolic shields used by the Masai peoples in Kenya and Tanzania". [13]
He spent a week in October 2012 at the MIT Glass Lab, working with glass artists and educators to explore computer modeling and folding techniques. He has been working with MIT staff for several years to develop software for computer-aided design, known as Virtual Glass, attempting to improve advance planning to reduce costs, since both the materials and facilities rentals that glassblowing requires are expensive. [14]
In November 2011, he inaugurated the glass studio at the Chrysler Museum of Art with a public demonstration in advance of its formal opening. He created "an impossibly large and complicated piece, which took a team of glassblowers more than an hour." [15] In the spring of 2012, he participated in glassblowing demonstrations to mark the tenth anniversary of the founding of The Glass Furnace, an international non-profit glass school in Istanbul. [16] [17]
In June 2012, the Columbus Museum of Art announced it had acquired a glass installation piece by Tagliapietra, Endeavor, an "armada of thirty-five boats suspended from the ceiling" that instantly became "an iconic part of the Museum's collection." [18]
Tagliapietra serves on the board of directors of UrbanGlass, a resource center for glass artists in Brooklyn, NY. [19]
Dale Chihuly is an American glass artist and entrepreneur. He is well known in the field of blown glass, "moving it into the realm of large-scale sculpture".
Murano is a series of islands linked by bridges in the Venetian Lagoon, northern Italy. It lies about 1.5 km (1 mi) north of Venice and measures about 1.5 km (1 mi) across with a population of just over 5,000. It is famous for its glass making. It was once an independent comune, but is now a frazione of the comune of Venice.
Glassblowing is a glassforming technique that involves inflating molten glass into a bubble with the aid of a blowpipe. A person who blows glass is called a glassblower, glassmith, or gaffer. A lampworker manipulates glass with the use of a torch on a smaller scale, such as in producing precision laboratory glassware out of borosilicate glass.
Studio glass is the modern use of glass as an artistic medium to produce sculptures or three-dimensional artworks in the fine arts. The glass objects created are intended to make a sculptural or decorative statement, and typically serve no useful function. Though usage varies, the term is properly restricted to glass made as art in small workshops, typically with the personal involvement of the artist who designed the piece. This is in contrast to art glass, made by craftsmen in factories, and glass art, covering the whole range of glass with artistic interest made throughout history. Both art glass and studio glass originate in the 19th century, and the terms compare with studio pottery and art pottery, but in glass the term "studio glass" is mostly used for work made in the period beginning in the 1960s with a major revival in interest in artistic glassmaking.
The Museum of Glass (MOG) is a 75,000-square-foot (7,000 m2) contemporary art museum in Tacoma, Washington, dedicated to the medium of glass. Since its founding in 2002, the Museum of Glass has been committed to creating a space for the celebration of the studio glass movement through nurturing artists, implementing education, and encouraging creativity.
Venetian glass is glassware made in Venice, typically on the island of Murano near the city. Traditionally it is made with a soda–lime "metal" and is typically elaborately decorated, with various "hot" glass-forming techniques, as well as gilding, enamel, or engraving. Production has been concentrated on the Venetian island of Murano since the 13th century. Today Murano is known for its art glass, but it has a long history of innovations in glassmaking in addition to its artistic fame—and was Europe's major center for luxury glass from the High Middle Ages to the Italian Renaissance. During the 15th century, Murano glassmakers created cristallo—which was almost transparent and considered the finest glass in the world. Murano glassmakers also developed a white-colored glass that looked like porcelain. They later became Europe's finest makers of mirrors.
Murrine are colored patterns or images made in a glass cane that are revealed when the cane is cut into thin cross-sections. Murrine can be made in infinite designs from simple circular or square patterns to complex detailed designs to even portraits of people. One familiar style is the flower or star shape which, when used together in large numbers from a number of different canes, is called millefiori.
Jean-Pierre Canlis is an American glass artist.
In glassblowing, cane refers to rods of glass with color; these rods can be simple, containing a single color, or they can be complex and contain strands of one or several colors in pattern. Caneworking refers to the process of making cane, and also to the use of pieces of cane, lengthwise, in the blowing process to add intricate, often spiral, patterns and stripes to vessels or other blown glass objects. Cane is also used to make murrine, thin discs cut from the cane in cross-section that are also added to blown or hot-worked objects. A particular form of murrine glasswork is millefiori, in which many murrine with a flower-like or star-shaped cross-section are included in a blown glass piece.
Dante Marioni is an American glass artist.
Richard "Dick" Marquis is an American studio glass artist. One of the first Americans ever to work in a Venetian glass factory, he became a master of Venetian cane and murrine techniques. He is considered a pioneer of American contemporary glass art, and is noted for his quirky, playful work that incorporates flawless technique and underlying seriousness about form and color.
David Scott Patchen is an American glass artist who uses the techniques of cane and murrine in an American style. Patchen's work is known primarily for a combination of complexity and scale in densely patterned glass. His work is in many private and public collections internationally, featured in many publications and frequently in juried shows such as SOFA, Chicago, ART Shanghai and ART Palm Beach. His work is shown in galleries in the U.S., Canada and Europe. Patchen was awarded an artist residency in 2010 in Seto city, Japan where his visit was covered by the local media and included lectures, demonstrations and a show of his work at the Seto City Art Museum. His work has won awards and is in both private and public collections internationally. Based on Patchen's expertise, his book is part of the permanent collection of Giorgio Cini Foundation's Centro Studi del Vetro library in Venice, Italy and the Rakow Library at the Corning Museum of Glass.
Flo Perkins is an American glass artist currently working and residing in the Pojoaque Valley north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. She received her Bachelor of Arts from the Philadelphia College of Art (1974), Master of Arts from the University of California at Los Angeles (1981), and she studied under renowned Italian master glass blower Lino Tagliapietra. Her work can be found in several museum collections including the Corning Museum of Glass, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Albuquerque Museum and the Racine Art Museum as well as numerous public and private collections.
Pauly & C. - Compagnia Venezia Murano is one of the oldest glass factories of Murano: it was founded more than 150 years ago. The company produces glass art, most notably Roman murrine, mosaics and chandeliers.
Paolo Venini emerged as one of the leading figures in the production of Murano glass and an important contributor to twentieth century Italian design. He is known for having founded the eponymous Venini & C. glassworks.
Berengo Studio is a glass studio transforming the art of glass and glass art through collaborations with contemporary artists based in Murano, Venice, Italy.
The Seguso family has been dedicated to the art of Murano glass in Venice since May 3, 1397. Seguso is one of the most esteemed, historical and respected glass manufacturers on the island, and among the largest glass furnaces in Murano, which has a few, homonymous furnaces. Glass made by the Seguso furnace can be found in over 75 museums worldwide, such as MOMA in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Today, Seguso is known for its high end Venetian glass objects, lighting, accessories and custom installations. Seguso glass has been made for the Pope, Royalty and numerous luxury interiors throughout the world.
William Warmus is a curator, art critic, and author focusing on transparent media.
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Cesare Toffolo is a glass artist who lives in Murano, Italy, and works from his glass studio from a 14th century palace there. He is considered to be the world's best technical flame worker.
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