The Moscow Museum of Modern Art has opened a display dedicated to glass art. This project presents works of 12 Moscow-based artists from the The New Glass association, who chose to experiment with this material, exploring new approaches and forms.
The history of glass as a material totals almost 30,000 years. Glass has always been a very practical and cheap material and thus was mainly used for utilitarian purposes. However its natural beauty and grace was to change this someday. And that day came in the 20th century, when a new concept of art came to life. From then on, not only traditional painting, drawing and sculpture were taken seriously as art objects. Handicraft works took their place right beside them.
Members of the informal association The New Glass continue the artistic process that began in the 1960s, when utilitarian decorative functions of the glass lost its paramount meaning. Glass became a fully-fledged malleable material allowing the creation of anything at all, depending on just how far your imagination can take you.
Mirrors, lenses and engravings, transparency and solidity make the artistic possibilities endless. And that is what the 12 artists from the The New Glass association focus on. The glass works presented at the display take shapes of pictures, vases, sculptures of little houses and much more.
The display will be on at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art through to September 4.