Contacts III

Object NameSculpture

Artist Stanislav Libenský (Czech, 1921-2002)

Artist Jaroslava Brychtová (Czech, 1924-2020)

Made FromNon-lead glass, Steel structure

Date1984-1987

TechniqueMold-melted, cut, ground, polished, assembled

Size(a) Sculptural Part H: 121.2 cm, W: 96 cm, D: 26.2 cm; (b) Sculptural Part H: 109 cm

Accession Number88.3.27

Credit LineGift in part of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

Curatorial Area(s)

Postwar and Contemporary

Exhibitions

Stanislav Libenský, Jaroslava Brychtová: A 34 Year Collaboration with Glass

Czech Glass Now: Contemporary Sculpture, 1970-2004

Interpretive Notes

Web Text

The internationally acclaimed artists Libenský and Brychtová pioneered, explored, developed, and defined glass as a medium for contemporary sculpture. The career in glass of this husband-and-wife team spanned more than 45 years. Their art explores ideas about light, color, space, and transparency. In Contacts, two prisms intersect to form a cube. The combination of two geometric shapes to create a third form is characteristic of Libenský and Brychtová’s work. A much larger version of Contacts was commissioned for a wall in the Narodní metro station in Prague in 1983.

Place Made

Czechoslovakia, Zelezny Brod

Physical DescriptionTransparent topaz non-lead glass; mold-melted, ground, polished, assembled; steel structure. Solid, narrow, vertical cast sections that are mirror images of each other and stand upright--partly overlapping with approximately 3/8" in between; both irregular shapes consist of a squared, upper, outside corner of uniform thickness the extends downward diagonally then sharply thickens to form a low, wide, diagonal, pyramidal interior edge that tapers in at the base of the section; when pyramidal sections are overlapped the top and sides of the sculpture form two broad, flat corners flanking a central cube that extends downward and visually splits apart leaving a space between the two sections at the base; overall interior veiling and seed bubbles; sections rest on a solid metal rhomboid base; inscribed in block letters near interior base edge of one section: "S. LIBENSKý J. BRYCHTOVÁ 1984-87".
Provenance

Provenance Remark

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