E-Newsletter : Issue #013 Martin Rosol

• Quote
  of the Month
• Artist
  of the Month: Martin Rosol
• Calendar

“Color
is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul
is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand
that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations
in the soul.” – Wassily Kandinsky

Martin, like many Czech glassworkers, learned his trade in a
“company school” set up to train craftsmen
to execute limited edition designs for art glass manufacturers.
Though the arrangement provided employment for many,
it did not provide young artists with the degree required
by the old regime to sell art. So, by day, Martin turned
out functional art in the form of bowls and vases for
the factory. At night, using scrap from the day’s production,
he created his own larger, more abstract pieces. Before
long his sculptures were being exhibited in Europe and
the United States, and in 1981, Martin was awarded the
Bavarian State Prize for Glass Sculpture in Munich.

Eventually, through friends, Martin had the opportunity to come
to the U.S. on a visitor’s passport, to work with an
established glass artist in New York State. He set up
machines for the artist and worked with him in his studio,
all the while perfecting his own work. Holsten Galleries
in Stockbridge was among the first to sell some of his
pieces during this time in the U.S. After five months
his visa expired, and he had to return to Czechoslovakia
permanently in the summer of 1986.

The Rosol family’s journey took them from Hungary, to Yugoslavia,
to Austria then to Germany, where they waited for two
years to get visas to emigrate to the U.S. They signed
up for English classes together at Greenfield Community
College. In 1994, The Rosol family became naturalized
American citizens and they now live in Massachusetts,
where Martin works in his own studio.

Influenced most by architectural studies, Martin’s sculptures,
in the words on one admirer, are “works of elegant
design and craftsmanship”. Made with several pieces
of glass precisely cut from blocks of crystal, the glass
is constructed in architectural forms after selected
surfaces have been sand-blasted.

With the new “Argonautica” series, Martin Rosol
evokes the inner planetary worlds of the oceans, which
have a deep psychological connection to the subconscious
mind. These studies in glass reflect light in a way
that recalls our deep and abiding fascination with those
worlds. With simple geometric forms and thin veneers
of color, light is transformed through our perception
into the mystical world of our collective memory, taking
us back to a time when the universe was still a daily
experience of unified consciousness; before the world
of technology shattered our myths and memories.

Rosol’s public collections include the American Craft Museum
in New York, the Kanazawa Museum in Japan and the Moravian
National Gallery in the Czech Republic.

^
Return to Top

A great way to see what’s happening is to access the Berkshire
Visitors’ Bureau website, at www.Berkshires.org.

October
27-30: Sofa Chicago (at Navy Pier). Holsten
Galleries will present one-person exhibitions of Dale
Chihuly and Lino Tagliapietra. www.sofaexpo.com

November-December: Group glass exhibition at gallery. Featuring Dante Marioni, William Morris, Stephen Powell, Martin Rosol and other gallery artists.

Please check our website in September for more SOFA
images

January
12-16, 2006: Palm Beach 3. West Palm Beach Convention
Center. We will present an all new body of work by Lino Tagliapietra
Tagliapietra.

May
28-January 16, 2006: GARDENS OF GLASS, Major exhibition
of Dale Chihuly at Kew Gardens, London Link is https://www.kew.org

Please contact the gallery for further information or
to obtain catalogues.

^ Return to Top