Glass Museum, Murano
From July 7th to September 30th 2012

Offering a bird’s eye view of the tradition of contemporary glass, this exhibition is a moment of reflection on more recent glass production, completing the historical visit of the permanent collection of the Murano Glass Museum.
However, the exhibition also wants to pay homage to the work and life of Egidio Costantini on the centennial of his birth (1912-2012), as one of the most representative figures on the scene of Muranese craftsmanship par excellence.
With the outstanding creativity and genial intuition that made this great figure one of his kind, over thirty pieces of his work are on display on the ground and first floor of the museum; these were the fruit of his collaboration with the most renowned artists of the 1900s – such as Jean Arp, Jean Cocteau, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Oskar Kokoschka, Lucio Fontana, Pablo Picasso and Reuven Rubin – all of whom were assiduous visitors of his Fucina degli Angeli, the creations of which were ‘translated’ with exceptional skill into true masterpieces of glass work.

Curated by Chiara Squarcina and organised chronologically, this important contemporary addition also helps the visitor understand the effect that this highly successful collaboration between Muranese glass factories and great architects and artists had, and still has, on the outstanding quality of the finished product, not only from a formal and artistic but also from a technical point of view.

The outstanding innovation that characterises Costantini’s works – ‘the Master of Masters’ – lies in the fact that he understood how glass was able to communicate with artistic expressions and thus enhance it in an innovative, unique fashion.

Indeed, in his hands a glass object became both a ‘work of art’ and the ‘conceptual concretisation’ of the highest level.

This is therefore the perfect way to remember an outstanding historical period during which a new creative phase began on the whole island of Murano, leading to the development of new intuitions that always focussed on the enhancement of glass art and the infinite artistic combinations that would represent a constructive basis for the creative dynamics of the future.

The new number of the series Schegge di vetro (Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, 2012) has been published on the occasion of this exhibition.

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Exhibition included in the museum’s general admission