Czech Glass, 1945-1980: Design in an Age of Adversity

January 18 - June 18, 2006
Organized by the Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf, Germany

The Czech Republic, largely comprised of lands once known as Bohemia, has a long tradition of glassmaking. The area bordering Germany, in particular, has been the center of glassmaking schools and production for centuries, and was highly impacted by the Nazi annexation of the territory (called the Sudetenland) in 1938, just before the outbreak of World War II.

The defeat of Germany by the Allies in 1945 led to the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops and the adoption of Communist rule by the country. German residents of the borderland, including many prominent in the glass industry, were forced to leave. Czechs formerly from the area, who had themselves been banished by the Nazis, returned. Glass designers, craftsmen, and teachers, as well as painters and sculptors new to the medium, traveled north and revived the flagging glass industry.

Communist ideology mandated social realism in art. This style was characterized by images of happy workers and productive factories and farms. Abstract art, which had been a dominating force in Czech, European, and American art for decades, was labeled "decadent." Many Czech painters and sculptors, who were prevented from continuing to work in their pre-War abstract styles, began to enter the applied arts, particularly glassmaking, in which the government was more permissive about innovation. In international expositions and world's fairs of the era, the government presented thrilling examples of Czech glass to impress the West with the accomplishments of the Communist regime.

In a repressive political era, glass design became an outlet for artistic exploration. Czech glassmakers became international pioneers in the use of the medium for artistic purposes.

Czech Glass, 1945-1980: Design in an Age of Adversity includes seminal works by Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová, Václav Cigler, Vladimír Kopecký, František Vízner, Dana Vachtová, and many other luminaries of Czech glass.