Jan Fišar – Retrospective 1966-1997

Exhibition date:  February – April 1997

The Czech glass artist Jan Fišar presented his glass sculptures spanning three centuries at Glasgalerie Hittfeld. This retrospective is certainly impressive within the context of the contemporary glass movement. Since 1988, the year Glasgalerie Hittfeld was founded, Jan Fišar has been regularly represented with his works here. Visitors and art enthusiasts have had the opportunity to follow his artistic development at the gallery over the past eight years.

Although Jan Fišar mainly worked for the architecture from 1966 until 1980, he simultaneously created several interesting objects. Since 1980 he has exclusively dedicated himself to the creation of studio glass. “At the time of the socialism, there were only two organizations which had the monopoly to present the objects of an artist abroad. Therefore the artist didn’t have the slightest idea where his objects could be found or who had acquired them”, stated Jan Fišar in the video film “Another Bohemian Glass”.

This is also the explanation why the majority of the plastics exhibited in Glasgalerie Hittfeld date from the period after the political change. In spite of this, objects of Jan Fišar’s various creative periods are represented.

For example from his initial years 1966 to 1968 several objects of melted glass are exhibited which in no case can be described as “old”. The great variety of his interests becomes visible in his “cycles”. Principally this work is divided into two wide and totally different fields:

The sculptures, i.e. figured objects created out of slumped glass and their variations, and the optical works, werheby the artist concentrates on the interior of the object. This also includes his “baroque glass sculptures” as well as the presently finished theme of “shells” and the unique “mythical creatures”, which he created from 1987 to 1991 and whereby he combined glass with bronze. The always new variations of the so-called “stones”, which for years have shown a constant development, are part of the second field, together with the already abandoned theme of the “prisms”.

Due to the technology of the slumped, optical glass, a technique which the artist developed by himself, he has created objects being called “movement of the material” in the last few years, which establish the connection between these two fields. As hardly anyone else, Jan Fišar masters the technical refinements which he uses for the realization of his glass plastics. These refinements enable him to develop his sculptoral feeling and to fully concentrate on his message.

In a manifold way, his objects allow a look at his life and his experiences. His artistic conversion – even that of his negative experiences – ends, however, positively. Today works of the sixtythree year old artist can be seen in international musuems as well as in numerous private collections all over the world.

This unique exhibition – Jan Fišar – 30 years working with glass – which Eliška Stölting presents in her glass gallery, not only offers an amazing summary of the creations made by this artist, but it also fully appreciates him through his ojects as an “individual”.