Jiří Harcuba, Marc Chagal, engraved portrait, 1977, 14cm
Jiří Harcuba (Czech, born 1928)
Visiting Artist Summer Series Residency: July 9 - 13
Lecture: July 13, 2pm

Artist Statement
Glass engraving – my heritage

My heritage is the place I was born. My heritage is also the family tradition. All my ancestors worked with glass. As a boy I assisted my father in his small workshop at home. Thirteen years old I became apprentice for glass-engraving in the factory.

With sixteen I came 1945 to the glass-school in Novy Bor, where the most influential teacher was Stanislav Libensky. My heritage got a new dimension.

In Prague at the Academy of Art and Design dominated Professor Josef Kaplicky. I’ve got 1958 a postgraduate study for 3 years. I could concentrate on research in “new ways of glass-engraving.” I was 30 and my work became independent. I started to follow my own way. I took part in major exhibitions representing Czech glass at EXPO 58 and Trienale in Milano 1959. I changed from copper-wheel to stone wheels at the big lathe. Since 1961 I was permanent teacher for engraving and sculpture. The sixtieth became a high tide. The art world-wide was connected in spite of the iron curtain. My engravings went in a more abstract way. I used V-shaped stone wheels for my “Towns” with a rather geometrical structure. This was shown in London in 1964. I spent one trimester at the Royal College of Art. It was another time of research and teaching experience. Since 1964 was Libensky appointed professor of the glass program at the academy in Prague. I became his assistant. I was fired from school in 1971. In the next 20 years I worked freelance.

My “Smetana” was accepted in the “new Glass” exhibition in Corning 1979. 1983 invited me Tom Buechner to give a lecture at the GAS conference in Tucson. I started to teach in USA.

Even as I was appointed professor at the Academy in Prague after 1989 and was elected to be the rector of the school 1991, I never stopped teaching abroad. I am showing relationship of prehistoric carving and contemporary art. Primary art is most powerful. To engrave means leaving traces of the wheel, to listen to the speech of wheels, to leave own marks. It is not about perfection. Sketches or unfinished engravings are usually better. The wheel gives your design abstract shapes. Today diamond wheels replace copper wheels and stone wheels.

The “intaglio” engraving creates a specific sculptural quality.

Heritage means all, we are able to understand, to select the best and pass it to the next generation.

We are the link between the past and the future.