Stanislav Libenský
Czech, 1921 - 2002
In 1948 Libenský returned to the Prague Academy where he studied under Josef Kaplický, a painter, sculptor and architect who was head of the school of painting on glass. Through his dynamic teaching style and modernist ideas Kaplicky had a tremendous influence on his students and thus on the independence of glass as an art form in Czechoslovakia. In 1953 Libenský returned to Zelezný Brod to become the director of the Specialized School of Glassmaking. It was during that time that he met Jaraslava Brychtová, the daughter of Jaroslav Brychta, a well-known glass designer. Brychtová had begun to experiment with casting and carving glass in the late 1940s.
Josef Kaplický's death in 1962 left a void at the Prague Academy that was filled by Libenský, who was appointed a professor in the glass department in 1963. Libenský was an excellent teacher who respected the tradition of glass in Czechoslovakia while furthering his own ideas about the modern direction of glass art. His career at the school lasted nearly one-quarter of a century. During that time, despite the opposition of the Communist government that had taken hold of the country in the late 1940s, Libenský was able not only to influence two generations of glass artists through his teaching but also, through international lecturing and exhibition of his and Jaraslava Brychtová's works, build world-wide interest in modern Czech glass art.
Among the honors given to Libenský were a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Craft Museum (now the Museum of Arts and Design) in New York City in 1997 and an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Art in London, England in 1995. He was made a Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 1989.
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