Z Folio Gallery is honored to host an exhibit of glass sculptures by Czech Republic’s leading glass artists Mr. Bohumil Elias Sr. and his son, Bohumil Elias Jr. When you are in our area, dont' miss this one-of-a-kind opportunity, through end of 2007.
Bohumil Elias: Remembering a True Artist
(The following was written by Ivan Kren, curator of permanent glass exhibit in East Bohemia Museum in Pardubice, and published by Ceramics & Glass Magazine in June 2005.)
Mr. Bohumil Elias, one of the most influential glass artists, died on May 21, 2005. Mr. Elias, irreplaceable and most respected, co-shaped Czech and world glass arts with his multifaceted creativity. His charisma, authority and humanity will be sorely missed.
During 1950s, glass went through a transformation as a medium of artistic expression, a transformation which resulted in the birth of the “studio glass” phenomenon. Czech artists were at the forefront of the new view of the medium of glass and they are respected worldwide in the field until today. Mr. Bohumil Elias is always going to be one of the leaders.
His talent flourished during studies under the guidance of Professor Kaplicky at College of Applied Arts in Prague 1957-1963. His studies stressed the importance of talent development in all artistic media, which provided Bohumil Elias with an opportunity to develop his skills of painting and drawing into a characteristic expressive expression. All of his subsequent artistic development was determined by his focus on glass, painting and drawing.
Having finished studies, Bohumil Elias continued to develop his painting style into a wholly individual, recognizable style. At the same time he begun to create works for architecture. One of the most remarkable achievements was a large scale “dry” fountain, developed for the Czechoslovakian pavilion of World Exposition 1967 in Montreal. Here Mr. Elias used the visual and kinetic effect of air bubbles floating through glass cylinders filled with water.
The first milestone of his career took place in 1975. Asked to create new glass windows for a gothic church of Virgin Mary in Dobrs, Bohumil Elias used glass shapes cut from flat glass, which he layered horizontally. This original solution was met with much enthusiasm, as this technique presents outstanding illusion of light properties and variability with viewing angle. This new and effective use of glass in architecture was adopted by many followers around the world.
In subsequent years Bohumil Elias continued to explore layering of cut flat sheets of glass and building three dimensional shapes for use in architecture. Works from that period range from windows for religious buildings, to three dimensional sculptures and objects, to large scale decorative glass walls, to a table for a wedding chapel located in the Prague City Hall in 2004.
This technique become one of the main elements of expressions of his works in glass sculpture. By gluing layers of glass he was able to create three dimensional forms, freely extending from a rigid shape, or, on the contrary, create deep hollow shapes. Size of these works ranges from large to intimate, such as sculptures depicting water, space, or clouds. With the use of this technique he was able to best exploit the nature of glass as artistic media, as he continued to return to the technique. The overall meaning continued to change, too. While his early works were often based on the play of shapes of illusory changing elasticity, on disturbed rhythm of fragile lines, modeled by light shattered on sharp surfaces, , since early 1990s he moved to simplicity and built stark cut and polished sculptures, monumentally geometrical. He begun to paint surfaces on individual layers. The paint offered an illusory impression of depth of the inner space, creating an illusion of an inner movement of shapes ‘floating’ within the material.
As mentioned earlier, Bohumil Elias was the rare artist who moved intensely, without hesitation or compromise, between glass, painting and drawing. His talent for painting gave unity to his overall artistic expression. Mr. Elias continuously explored painting beside his work with glass and eventually he created a wholly individual expression, full of intensity, fantasy and abstraction. The painter and the glass artist in him did not fully merge until late 1980s. Layered glass did not provide a means for painting to be used.
Late 1980s brought a new stage of artistic development. In 1985, during a Glass Symposium in Novy Bor, Bohumil Elias had an opportunity to experiment with painting onto blown hollow glass shapes. The technique enabled him to merge his deep affinity to painting with the glass medium. The artist used three dimensionality of glass as an element in painting. Because his painting style had been previously perfected, the new fusion of the two disciplines, or media, resulted in a revival of painting on glass for the studio glass arts in general, and an exclusive position in the field for Bohumil Elias. The artist finally united a painting with a glass sculpture.
Since 1990s the artist selected sheets of glass, shaped in a kiln, as starting points for his glass objects-paintings. The glass object itself, freed from unnecessary decorations, became the base for fused colors. When compared to the silent simplicity of cut and layered geometric objects, they resemble explosions of colors. Glass enabled the artist to encompass space with painting, it introduced a magical play of light and a three dimensional expansion into an imaginary space beyond the object itself.
During the last fifteen years Bohumil Elias, yet again searching for a way to express new ideas, reached beyond known territory. His paintings entered space in the form of objects which included painting and sculptural shapes. Since 1990s sculpture in bronze and granite begun to be explored more extensively, strengthening the three dimensional aspect of the artist’s work. Simplicity and cleanness is stressed. The artist’s view of the world as a spin of movement is expressed through color and line.
The passionate need to create was the driving force behind his life’s work. He intuitively sought new ways of expression because they were necessary to fulfill his vision. He indulged in the richness of shapes and colors. The confidence in his vision enabled him to freely move between various media of expression and use them according to the level with which they fulfilled that vision. Bohumil Elias transformed his world into a theatre and beings around him into actors. He chose the position of observer and ironic commentator.
The artist’s more than forty-year career was interrupted suddenly, at a time when he, with his famed explosive intoxication with creation, was beginning to form yet another new direction in glass and painting.
His sculptures and paintings are placed in private and public collections in the Czech Republic and abroad. They are the works of a tremendously inventive artist who shaped fine arts internationally.