Contemporary glass art

This file contains the theoretical content of the academic course: Mural Technology (Tools and Materials), presented in Arabic by Zeinab Nour who has been teaching the course since the year 2011/2012 to the students of the third level of Mural painting section in the department of Painting, at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Helwan University.
The course has also been activated as the first e.course with approved content from the Painting Department of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Helwan University; its scientific content was reviewed by an external committee consisting of:
- Prof. Mohamed Salem, professor of mural painting at Alexandria University
- Prof. Amal Sabry.. Professor of mural painting at Minya University
And that was in the year 2014/2015.
The content was subsequently updated more than once to date.
Worth mentioning the expression "Mural Painting" or "mural design" refers to the academic specialization in Fine arts faculties in Egypt, it basically refers to public artworks, and it is more related to the design of exterior and interior architectural spaces and surfaces.
PS:
** Course content is downloaded by the students themselves without any intermediates and free of charge.
** All figures and illustrations are shown only during lectures.

Robert Pinart (b. 1927) was an active stained and dalle de verre glass artist and designer for over fifty-five years--from the late 1940s until 2008. He completed over one hundred stained and dalle de verre glass commissions across the country, and has had his work included in many exhibitions of architectural stained glass.Pinart was known as one of the best colorists and painters of stained glass in the United States during the last half of the 20th century. He was an abstract expressionist glass artist, and he was one of the first to use dalle de verre in the United States.

«L'impact du verre contemporain a été considérable et il a introduit une dimension entièrement inédite dans le  monde de l'art. [...] Il s'est produit rien moins qu'une révolution culturelle dans le milieu verrier depuis les années 1960. Celle-ci se fonde sur la simple découverte que de la fusion alchimique du sable et de la silice peut résulter une substance qui, entre les mains d'un artiste, possède un potentiel expressif comparable à celui du canevas et de la peinture. Ce développement a stimulé l'onde d'énergie artistique dans le monde du verre, et dévoilé de nouvelles perspectives. [...] L'histoire du verre est sur le point de transcender la connotation traditionnelle de matériau artisanal qui la caractérisait jusqu'ici.»

Dan Klein, in Glass. A Contemporary Art, 1989 .

Extrait de mon introduction, 1997.

By analysing the relationship between drawing and actual object, it is observed that the design of glass artefacts depends on the features of the material itself, on the processing techniques and their limits. More generally, therefore, we can say that form is the result of forces located inside the matter, as it also happens in the generation of a living organism. For this reason the discourse on the creation and graphic representation of these objects can be approached from the point of view of biomorphism, a feature that can be found in similar artefacts on several levels: from the figurativity of the glass animals to the almost abstract shape obtained from the self-organising matter through its intrinsic forces. It is precisely in the creations with a higher degree of abstraction that we observe the same “biomorphic” feature found in some of the major scientific and artistic studies since the 1950s, although the tradition of blown glass, with its particular processing techniques, is preserved.

Catalog accompanying two concurrent exhibitions "If You Thirst for a Homeland: Flame-worked glass by Dafna Kaffeman" (curated by the Chrysler Museum of Art) and "Aerial Roots" (curated by Petach Tivka Museum) and on view August 12, 2021), on view August 12, 2021 to December 12, 2021.

Housed in the National Gallery of Australia in the Decorative Arts and Design Collection, Surge 16 (see fig.1) is a work in glass that embodies a rare combination of styles, processes and effects within its single form. The piece, that belongs to the stringent and scientific creative discipline of Glass Art (or ‘Studio Glass’), relays a narrative captured within materials and processes, and yet one that attracts multiple sociological, ecological, and institutional queries due to its potential ability to truly break free from the very genre from which it originates - and due to its unique craftsmanship. The work is a 2011 creation that belongs to a series of works under the same (numbered) title spanning from 2008 to present day, 2016. It is a work of immense subtlety and yet is visceral, full of energy and movement. It is a temporal work that is frozen in transit from one process to another, and to another again, and is highly reflective of the medium and the materiality of glass while acknowledging the tradition for which the genre stands. The work is very beautiful – even sensual – and while sparkling like a diamond it is, nonetheless, a precariously fragile and dangerous object to come close to. Surge 16 is ultimately an illusory object that, while restrained both physically in its display, and dialectically in its minimalist background narrative, its simple success ignites discussions of investigation into territories unchartered and highly guarded; it is a work that relates as directly to nature and the environment as to nostalgia and romanticism; a work that makes claims to no conceptual territory and yet is seemingly able to belong to many, simply by the recognition it receives and the gradual impact it is making.

La relazione con lo spazio pubblico e la lavorazione della materia sono due momenti centrali e inseparabili, che da decenni si integrano e compenetrano nell’attività di Pino Castagna, caratterizzandone il fare artistico.

Nell’ambito della mostra a Palazzo Barbaran viene posta particolare attenzione da una parte alla realizzazione di opere commissionate da committenti pubblici e volte a una fruizione pubblica, dall'altra alla ricerca materica e alla sperimentazione dei materiali più diversi, da sempre presente nelle opere dell'artista.

Opere di Castagna in spazi pubblici si trovano tutt’oggi in molteplici città e località europee, tra cui si ricordano “Due figure” (1970-74) presso il Tempio Malatestiano di Rimini, “Fiore” (1978) a Deauville in Francia, “Memoria della Giudecca” (1981-82) a Francoforte in Germania, “Muro” (1983-84) a Quarona Sesia, “Montagna spaccata” (1987-88) in piazza Roma a Recoaro Terme, “Chiesa all’aperto – il grande segno” (1988-94) presso il Sagrato della Chiesa di Zermeghedo, “Monadi” (1997) a Villa Glori a Roma, “Lo spino del filo spinato” (2001-2009) a piazza Isolo a Verona, “Cespo veneziano” (2002) a Castellón de La Plana in Spagna, “Alpinia – Cascade de Beynost” (2005) nei pressi di Lione in Francia, “… in pietra alpestra e dura” (2008-2009) in piazza Bad-Kissingen a Marina di Massa, “Canyon” (2012-13) a San Tirso in Portogallo.

Accanto a queste in collocazione permanente, innumerevoli sono state le installazioni temporanee, che Castagna ha eseguito in spazi pubblici, tra cui per esempio sulla Maximilianstrasse a Monaco di Baviera (1971), in centro storico a Lucca (1976), nel parco di Palazzo delle Albere a Trento (1985), in centro storico a Salisburgo (1979), nel parco di Villa Carrara Bottagisio a Bardolino (1982), in differenti località della Lunigiana (2007), all’Isola della Certosa a Venezia (2009), a Villa Contarini a Piazzola sul Brenta (2011), a piazza dell’ Università a Treviso (2013).