Vladimír Kopecký
b. 1931, Svojanov, Czech Republic
Lives and works in Prague and Semtěž near Žlutice
Glass exists in different forms. Its clarity, shine, radiance are dominant. It is richly extravagant. Hot raw material, divine as glowing lava. However, it is possible to perceive glass also in the form of a mysterious, intimate, deep contemplation of a simple shape. Or there will be times when we almost completely suppress the properties of glass and turn it into a force expanding in excessive experience, in expression, in unknown explosive spheres...
(Vladimír Kopecký for the Pleiades of Glass exhibition at the Museum of Applied Arts 2018.)
After the war, Vladimír Kopecký studied at vocational glassmaking schools in Kamenické Šenov and Nové Bor (1946–1949), then began studying at the Prague University of Applied Arts under Professor Josef Kaplický, from whom he graduated in 1956. From the beginning, he was one of the exceptionally talented students. That's why Professor Kaplický suggested a postgraduate course for him, in which he persisted until 1961. The result of this period were unconventional paintings, etchings and engravings on blown glass, in which he treated glass as a kind of canvas and applied abstract painting to it. These results were highly appreciated by his teacher, and examples of them are included in the exhibition Bohemian Glass: the Great Masters.
Kopecký's personality is characterized by unconventionality, his work has pages of deeply expressive stormy painting and at the same time completely minimalistic. He is often credited with trying to make "ugly glass", but it is more about the fact that he always wanted to base his works primarily on his own expression, not on the pleasant appeal of glass. He remains an avant-garde representative of Czech post-war glassmaking and, at the same time, free art.
He is recognized not only in the field of glass, but also in the fields of painting, graphics, and installation. His performances in glassworks accompanied by music, based on action - pouring hot glass, liters of paint and various embedded artifacts - became a sensation. His glass works for architecture are also highly rated at home and abroad, for example in the USA, Holland, Japan, Germany, etc.
Since the fifties of the last century, when he won his first glass award – the Gold Medal at EXPO ´58 in Brussels – he became known for his art abroad. His work is represented in three dozen of the most important Czech and foreign collections of modern art and glass, including the National Gallery in Prague, the Museum of Applied Arts in Prague, the Museum in Corning, USA, the Museum in Toyama, Japan... his works can be found in a number of private collections . For his students, whom he taught at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague between 1990 and 2008, he became an icon, whom they respect for his artistic results, love for his perspective, kindness, endless support, and gift of words, thanks to which he is also considered a philosophizing poet.
Vladimír Kopecký enriched Czech and world glassware not only by educating his students, who led to absolute creativity rather than creating glass, but above all by his works and painting on glass, in which his very expressive - stormy and at the same time sometimes quiet, contemplative ideas appear. For all this, in 2009 he was awarded the Prize of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic for his contribution to the field of fine arts, and the famous International Glass Symposium in Nové Bor inducted him into the Hall of Fame in 2021.
Vladimír Kopecký enriched Czech and world glassware not only by educating his students, who led to absolute creativity rather than creating glass, but above all by his works and painting on glass, in which his very expressive, stormy and at the same time sometimes quiet, contemplative ideas appear. For all this, in 2009 he was awarded the Prize of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic for his contribution to the field of fine arts, and the famous International Glass Symposium in Nový Bor inducted him into the Hall of Fame in 2021.
