LINO TAGLIAPIETRA
Inspirations SCHANTZ GALLERIES SOFA Chicago 2016
Lino Tagliapietra finding inspiration on the island of Burano.
photo: Jim Schantz
MAESTRO LINO TAGLIAPIETRA
photo: Lino Tagliapietra
Inspirations
Schantz Galleries SOFA Chicago, 2016
photo: Russell Johnson
Lino Tagliapietra continues to share his experience as a technically masterful glass blower, teacher and artist who travels the world in search of inspiration for his work. This thirst for discovery mirrors one of his favorite explorers, Corto Maltese, a character from an early graphic novel by Italian comic book artist Hugo Pratt (1927-1995), who was venerated for fantastical stories and graphic dexterity. Lino Tagliapietra found a simpatico spirit and fellow adventurer in the tales of Corto’s travels as told through Pratt’s art. This year at SOFA Chicago, Lino Tagliapietra will debut several new series— Cayuga, Contarini and Fórcole—all reminiscent of places or experiences visited or imagined by the artist; he also continues to explore both panel glass and the sumptuous and challenging avventurine with a five Dinosaur Installation. It is worth noting, all of the works in this catalog were made this year, 2016, except for the vibrant Stromboli on the back cover, which was created in 2015. Lino is forever striving to find new inspirations, forms, and techniques as well as opportunities to make his work.
Front cover: Fórcole, 2016 38¾ x 11 x 8"; 38½ x 14 x 8"; 37 x 11 x 8" Right: Fórcole, 2016 34 x 15 x 8"
Like the Gondolier who needs a fulcrum, the fórcole, to travel the lagoon, Lino’s fulcrum, on which everything depends is the glass, to let him travel the world to share and create his art.
Fórcole, which Tagliapietra designed specifically for this show, are named after the rowlocks found on the gondolas in the beautiful lagoons of his native Venice. In this body of work, he re-imagines the centuries-old tradition of making fórcole, metamorphosing a functional object into sculpture. With remarkable technical ability, he communicates his expressive aesthetic and his light, intelligent, and inspiring presence. The strength and beauty of the glass parallels the natural vitality of the young wood that becomes fórcole. As with traditional Venetian oarlocks, each of Tagliapietra’s Fórcole requires an impressive amount of time and labor. Much as the wood must first be carefully chosen, hewn, seasoned, carved, and then finished with sandpaper and a sealant, so the glass and colors must first be made, blown into a shape, cut from the vessel, carved with battuto, shaped through slumping in a kiln, and polished. The Maestro has stated that it will be some time before he creates additional Fórcole because the amount of work that goes into each piece is so staggering.
Fórcole, 2016 38 x 11 x 8"; 37 x 12 x 8"; 37 x 12 x 8"
photo: Lino Tagliapietra
Cayuga experiments with shape as the compressed sides diverge from Lino’s more trademark symmetry. Lino worked with this form in May of this year at the MIT hot shop in Cambridge, MA and was very excited about the shape of the vessel. The sensual piece in this exhibition was made a few months later, in Corning, NY, and named after the nearby Finger Lakes. When he travels to work in different hot shops around the world, Lino prefers to bring his own color which he has special recipes for, and one of his favorites is his own red. It is rare that the maestro is without his camera, ready to capture the next encounter along his travels and to remind himself later of the colors and spirit of a person, place or time.
Cayuga, 2016, (detail) 21½ x 14½ x 7½"
Cayuga, 2016 21½ x 14½ x 7½"
Cayuga, 2016 20½ x 12¼ x 8¼"
Another new series is the Contarini, first blown May 2016 at the MIT hot shop in Cambridge, MA. Lino’s Contarini— colorful, multilayered vessels with clear murrini and swirling, vertical composition—are defined by wildly mod graphics. They are so named because they reminded Lino of the windows the Palazzo Contarini, in Venice. The Contarini family is a noted Venetian family, from which eight Doges led the Venetian Republic forward through ever changing ages between 1043 and 1797. The famous architect, Andrea Palladio, who was employed by the Contarini and their relatives, designed several of the most outstanding neo-classical structures in the Veneto’s environs.
Contarini, 2016 21¼ x 12¾ x 6¼"
Contarini, 2016 20 x 9Âź x 6"
A true adventurer with the material, another series in Tagliapietra’s recent body of work revitalizes a centuries-old glass-making technique called avventurine (from the Italian for adventure), which began in 17th-century Murano when a member of the Miotti family accidentally dropped some copper filings into a glass batch. The delicate process of incorporating metal into liquid glass then cooling it in low oxygen, reducing atmosphere as the mineral deposits clump gingerly together is capricious and often results in failure. Just to prepare the material is a feat of alchemy. When it works, shimmering striations of crystallized metal suspend wondrously in the glass. As Tagliapietra has described it “…sometimes I feel that it is not glass … but I feel the absolute magic and the preciousness of a material that came from the past.” The serpentine Fenice and the elegant Oca reveal how colors can vary from silver to gold, copper red to blue, purple to green depending on the filtering effects of the colored glass comprising the body of the material, and how the suspended metal deposits can be pulled into assorted shapes.
Fenice, 2016 21¼ x 14 x 3"
Oca, 2016 37¼ x 7¼ x 6¼"
photo: Lino Tagliapietra
In Greek and Roman mythology, the Muses were a source of knowledge and the inspirational goddesses of the arts—music, sculpture, poetry and dance. Glass artist Lino Tagliapietra finds his muses all around him. Whether traveling to upstate New York or an island in the South Pacific, glimpsing a water bird stretching her neck to the sky or the reflection of colors in his lagoon, Lino discovers new ideas wherever he finds himself. He is completely open to the experiences of life and perpetually looking forward to the next inspiration.
Dinosaur Installation 2016 29½ x 45¾ x 5"
Dinosaur, 2016 38½ x 20¾ x 6¾"
Alhambra, 2016 20¼ x 12½ x 7¾"
Spirale, 2016 23½ x 5¼ x 5¼"
Dinosaur, 2016 52½ x 7 x 5½"
London, 2016 32½ x 10½ x 10½"
Dinosaur, 2016 44¾ x 11 x 9½"
Angel Tear, 2016 47¼ x 16½ x 7½"
Niomea, 2016 42 x 17¼ x 8¼"
Niomea, 2016 32½ x 15¼ x 32¼"
LINO TAGLIAPIETRA Museums and Collections CHINA: Shanghai Museum of Glass, Shanghai DENMARK: Glasmuseum, Ebeltoft FRANCE: Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris GERMANY: Kestner Museum, Hannover ITALY: Aperto Vetro, Venice Biennale di Venezia Palazzo Franchetti, Venice Palazzo Grassi, Venice JAPAN: Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo Kitazawa Museum of Arts, Takane-cho Tokyo National Modern Art Museum, Tokyo Toyama City Institute of Glass, Toyama MEXICO: Museo del Vidrio, Monterrey THE NETHERLANDS: Danish Royal Museum, Copenhagen Museum Boijmans, Rotterdam Museum Het Paleis, The Haag SWITZERLAND: Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Losanna UNITED KINGDOM: Victoria and Albert Museum, London
UNITED STATES: Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue, WA Bergstrom Mahler Museum of Glass, Neenah, WI Cantor Art Center, Stanford, CA Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA Chazen Museum, Madison, WI Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA Colby College Museum, Waterville, ME Columbia Museum, Columbia, SC Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI Fuller Museum of Art, Brockton, MA Hunter Art Museum, Chattanooga, TN Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, CA M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, CA Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, New York, NY Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Chicago, OH Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Mint Museum of Craft and Design, Charlotte, NC Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, AL Museum of Art, Washington State University, Pullman, WA Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA National Museum of Ceramic Art and Glass, Baltimore, MD Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL Orlando Museum, Orlando, FL Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, DC Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH
CREDITS: Maestro Lino Tagliapietra | Inspirations A Special Exhibition at SOFA Chicago, 2016 Special Thanks to Lino Tagliapietra Artwork Photography: Russell Johnson, Cassandra Sohn and Kim Saul Design: Silver City Design and Publications Essay: Kim Saul © 2016 Lino Tagliapietra | Inspirations Schantz Galleries, Stockbridge, MA (413)298-3044
schantzgalleries.com
Back cover: Stromboli, 2015 34¾ x 9¼ x 6"
MAESTRO LINO TAGLIAPIETRA Inspirations
Schantz Galleries c o n t e m p o r a r y
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