Jaroslav Wasserbauer

24. september 1962

Závodný Gallery presents Jaroslav Wasserbauer’s glass works as individual sculptural objects. The exhibition displays primarily pieces from the late period indicating an orientation towards free standing, geometrized robust objects.

The primary substance for all sculptures and objects is the fused glass. This specific material is quite challenging in its processing technology as well as final manipulation. Nevertheless, Jaroslav Wasserbauer fully exploits its potential in his shape-abstracted sculptures. Natural light shapes the form and the volume of individual artefacts, brightens the colours of pigments, and highlights sharp edges on the surfaces of the presented objects.

The matte surface reflects the light and defines the sculpture in its surroundings. The luminous flux determines the volume of objects and highlights the deformation of specific parts. The viewer perceives foremost the different intensity of the coloured pigments at the points of deformation, only a closer inspection reveals a visible depression in the form due to a thinner layer of glass mass.

Beyond this, the ground surface allows the light to penetrate through the statue and to reveal the inside segmentation, regular or random, of the object. The form of the grid is determined in the phase of stacking glass bars or gravel in the gypsum form, thus before the melting process. Especially objects with coloured pigments create fascinating light effects. In the area of contact between two surfaces, separated by finely worked edges, the light of ray fractures and the colour of the glass appears in several degrees of intensity.

In his work, Jaroslav Wasserbauer, follows loosely up on the strong tradition of the Czech Glass School, formed in the 1950s and 1960s by the students of Josef Kaplický (at theAcademy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague), namely - Stanislav Libenský, Miluše Roubíčková, Vladimír Kopecký and Václav Cígler. The artist duo, Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová, achieved to elevate their concept of melted glass relief to the level of monumental sculpture, and they were also greatly interested in the matter of presenting glass sculpture in specific architectural context.

After his study at the Secondary School of Glass in Světlá nad Sázavou, Jaroslav Wasserbauer worked as a grinder at the Bohemia Glassworks in Josefodol. Today he is one of the few glass artists, he covers all stages of the process of work - sketch, plaster model, glass melting, glazing and its finishing and grinding, by himself.

Jaroslav Wasserbauer's work is represented in numerous private and institutional collections around the world such as Museum Taibei, China; Decorative Art Museum, Netherlands; Glass Museum, Monterrey, Mexico; etc.