Fuji HG31119

Lino Tagliapietra is one of a select few artists and glassblowers to achieve international recognition and acclaim. He shows his vessels, sculptures, and installations from New York to Sydney to London. He makes his work on Murano and in Seattle, and he has a prodigious exhibition schedule. Somehow, he finds time, on occasion, to teach through demonstrations and master classes at colleges, art schools, and glass programs. He is justly revered as a great maestro and an exceptional teacher by studio glass artists all over the world. Tagliapietra’s talent, knowledge, and teaching ability have given direction to the careers of many artists today. The dissemination of the remarkably creative and versatile craft language that is Venetian glassblowing may be his most important legacy. Throughout his prolific career, he has not been afraid to experiment or to make mistakes, and as is often the case, he has benefited immensely from the risks he has taken with his art. A new series of cylinders continues Tagliapietra’s interest in murrine and abstraction. The series is related, most closely, to the large, two-dimensional kiln-formed and hot-worked panels that constitute his most ambitious exploration with color. The technique used for this cylindrical vessel is a type of mosaic glass called murrine romane (Roman mosaic), and it is inspired by ancient Roman mosaic glass. Murrine romane was revived in the 1950s by the Venini glassworks. The name of the vessel, Fuji, was inspired by its shape, which Venetian glassblowers interpret as mountainlike. Signed: “Lino Tagliapietra Li 2011 F.” For more information, see Rosa Barovier Mentasti and Sandro Pezzoli, eds., Lino Tagliapietra. Da Murano allo studio glass: Opere 1954–2011, Venice: Marsilio, 2011; and Susanne K. Frantz, Lino Tagliapietra in Retrospect: A Modern Renaissance in Italian Glass, Tacoma, Washington: Museum of Glass, and Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008.