Vladimír Kopecký' (26 November 1931, Svojanov) is a Czech painter, graphic artist, glass artist and university professor. From 1990 to 2008 he was the head of the Glass Studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague.
Life Vladimír Kopecký was born in the village of Svojanov into a family of a seamstress and a carpenter. From 1934 he lived with his parents and brother in Uhříněves. From the age of five he wanted to become a painter, but at the end of the war the family moved to Děčín, where the nearest secondary art school was the State Vocational Glass School in Kamenický Šenov. He started his secondary school studies in 1946 under René Roubíček and Josef Khýn. Here Vladimír Kopecký first became acquainted with glass and in 1948-1949 he continued his studies at the State Industrial Glass School in Nový Bor, where Stanislav Libenský was his teacher.
In 1949-1956 he studied in the studio of monumental painting and glass at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague under Prof. Josef Kaplický. In 1952, during his school practice in Lednické Rovne in Slovakia, he suffered a very serious accident when a grinding wheel broke while he was grinding glass and hit him in the face.Masae Nakama, in: Libenský S, Nakama M, 1990, unpaginated He survived only by a miracle and underwent more than 20 plastic surgeries. After finishing his studies at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, he became a postgraduate student at the studio of Josef Kaplický, where he worked from 1958 to 1961, and then became a freelance artist.Stanislav Libenský, in: Libenský S, Nakama M, 1990, unpaginated
He participated in the Milan Triennial (1957), the Czechoslovak Glass Show in Moscow (1959) and the World Exhibitions in Brussels (1958), Montréal (1967) and Seville (1992). He won a gold medal for his glass mosaic for the Expo 58 in Brussels (together with the artists Adriena Šimotová and František Burant).A170427_163256_vytvarne-umeni_jb STAŘÍ MISTŘI: Kopecký dělá „ošklivé sklo“ a barvami polévá i sebe / OLD MASTERS: Kopecký makes "ugly glass" and pours paint over himself, i-DNES, 2017 In 1957–1967, he was creating monumental stained glass windows in cooperation with Josef Jiřička's company - Art Glass Works (nationalized and incorporated into the Ústředí uměleckých řemesel). In the 1960s and 1970s he was mainly engaged in painting and until the end of the 1980s in designing glass objects for architecture.
In 1990, at the request of students, he returned to the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, was appointed professor in 1992 and remained there as head of the glass studio until 2008. His assistant was Marian Volráb. Vladimír Kopecký maintained a very free atmosphere in the studio, which did not place any creative restrictions on the students. Kopecký's school at the UMPRUM, from which a number of prominent personalities came,Petr Pivoda, Milan Hlaveš, Glass - Vladimír Kopecký & from his school, 2015 followed Kaplický in promoting the general education of students, but consciously went against the "cultivation of glass" and placed more emphasis on the strength of expression.Vladimir Kopecký, 1999, in: Palata O (ed.), 2007
Vladimír Kopecký's first wife was the graphic artist Alena Kučerová. From 1991 he was a member of the art group Other Geometry and from 1992 of the renewed Umělecké beseda. Vladimír Kopecký lives with his second wife in Prague and works in his studios in Prague, in Central Bohemia and near Karlovy Vary.
Awards 1958 Expo 58 Brussels, Gold Medal 1984 Glass 84´ in Japan, The Bridgestone Museum Prize, Tokyo, Japan 1994 Holst Glas Prijs, Galerie Groeneveld, Almelo, NL 2009 Ministry of Culture Award for Contribution to the Visual Arts 2013 Jury Prize, Main Prize for Serigraphy, Printmaking of the Year 2017 Prague 1 Municipality AwardMalíř a sklářský výtvarník Vladimír Kopecký obdržel Cenu Prahy 1 /Painter and glass artist Vladimír Kopecký receives Prague 1 Award, Prague Patriot, 20.7.2017 2021 Hall of Fame, International Glass Symposium Nový BorIGS Hall of Fame, 2021
Work Vladimír Kopecký's work is a permanent interpenetration of his essential painterly foundation and his distinctive use of glass in his artistic work. Already his early glass realizations in the form of thin-walled vessels bear abstract painterly compositions that enter the "third dimension" through transparencies (Vase, 1958). From the early 1960s onwards, he used painting to deny the optical qualities of glass, juxtaposing the prevailing decorative qualities and emphasis on the properties of the noble material with painterly gesture and boldness, demonstrating his inclination towards abstract art.Susanne K. Frantz: Glass, paint and Kopecký, in: Vladimír Kopecký, 1999, pp. 25-28 At that time, he often shocked his contemporaries with his so-called "ugly glass".Milan Hlaveš, 2016, p. 34
In the artist's further works, a sovereign painterly line is constantly present. It can be divided into certain periods, but at the same time nothing is completely closed and the stimuli return repeatedly. It is connected in one organism with an unpredictable development scheme. Kopecký relies on his intuition, combining a geometric order with gestural painting. According to this veteran of Czech glassmaking, that's what life is like – illogical, incomprehensible and impossible to solve. The alternation of positions is based entirely on the mood of the moment and the simple desire to take a break from one form of expression in another. When compared to the American land art artist Robert Smithson, who is known for his entropic glass installations and minimalist plate glass objects, Kopecký's work is formally distinguished mainly by the expressive integration of glass and colour, which gives it vigour and richness.
Glass Shortly after graduating, Vladimír Kopecký designed monumental mosaics (Expo 58) and stained glass windows (Expo 67). His work in the 1960s and 1970s was substantially influenced by works for architecture. The line of objects made of ordered flat glass interlaced with coloured foil or sandblasted,Oldřich Palata, 2007 which he created from the 1970s onwards, is based on the principle of multiplied constructions and shapes (Planks, 1976). Their austerity has a calmness of precise order, but at the same time carries a coldness of lonely dehumanization. On each successive pane of glass, a geometric sandblasted segment is enlarged, reduced or displaced.Václav Erben, Some Notes on the Exhibition of Vladimír Kopecký, in: Vladimír Kopecký, 1999, p. 20 Kopecký was the first to use this principle to create an illusive space and depth (Corridor, 1972).Gajdůšek J, 2016
In the early 1980s, he left painting for a time and created stained glass windows cast in lead. It was a period of seeking for a new expression, as evidenced by the titles I don't know, I still don't know, etc. This series ends with the large-scale stained glass Morning (1987), in which he integrated almost all available techniques. By the end of the 1980s, Kopecký's work with glass is an expression of the moment, and the works are created spontaneously from leftover paint and fragments (Afternoon Chair, 1988).Kristian Suda, Kopecký's Stained Glass - Two Forms of Image, Glass Magazine 1993, in: Vladimír Kopecký, 1999
Alongside the disciplined nature of his geometric objects made of sandblasted plate glass stands a parallel direction of creation, which has combined glass and gestural expressive painting into one violent cry (Agony, 1993–2010). As the artist himself says: "I like absolute silence and the storm of the universe". In 1992, he created a monumental spatial composition of painted plate glass and metal measuring 2.8 x 11.7 m for the World's fair 1992 in Seville.Petrová S, 2018, p. 5 The glass is stacked in a scrummage of panes and folded blocks that recall the frozen moment of a railway accident.Susanne K. Frantz: Glass, paint and Kopecký, in: Vladimír Kopecký, 1999, p. 29 It is covered by wildly colored drips, brush marks and hand smears. They are fading under the deposits in cinder-like structures, in bizarre patterns of trickling streams. The clear prisms lose their mass by blackening, as if they are sinking into a spaceless darkness. The object is a synthesis of creative endeavours and belongs to the highlights of Kopecký's work, but after the exhibition it was destroyed and preserved only in photographs.Václav Erben, Some Notes on the Exhibition of Vladimír Kopecký, in: Vladimír Kopecký, 1999, p. 21
Broken pieces of rails have become an important structural element of his installations.Primusová A, in: Vladimír Kopecký, 2019 In his smaller objects, glass is sandwiched into a colourful whole with segments of rails, bricks or wood (Afternoon Chair, 1995).Ivo Janoušek, 1988
Kopecký deprived glass of its tendency towards primary attractiveness by brutal intervention of colour, destruction and combination with other materials such as wood, cardboard and metal (Search, Space 3 event, Všemín 1986) In the installation in the Prague Castle Ballroom in 1999, where black colour dominated, evoking feelings of frustration and loneliness, the dangerous and hurtful sharp edges of the glass stood out from the black mass. Despite all the relentless attack, however, Kopecký's glass remains a material with a perceived essence of fragility and vulnerability.
His need for a permanent polarity is evidenced by the fact that, in a parallel posture, the artist allows glass to operate in the purity of a completely minimalist conception of a stereometric shape made of glued flat glass or in the form of multiplied curled shapes made of plate glass, with the implication of something tacitly symbolic between heaven and earth. They act as a counterpoint to his expressionist works, but develop the same human themes of spatial infinity, silence, anxiety and melancholy.
Painting and prints Similar principles of the encounter of opposites as in his work with glass, apply to Kopecký's painting, which was strongly influenced by abstract expressionism and action painting. From a methodically disciplined, geometrically spare or mysteriously veiled position of dehumanized constructions and buildings (Street, 1970, Labyrinth, 1979), he moves to expressive eruptions of colour and animality, to the destruction of the material and the disruption of the viewer's certainty about the notion of beauty. According to Suzanne Frantz, Kopecký's painting is the key to his entire oeuvre.Susanne K. Frantz, in: Vladimír Kopecký, 1999, p. 11
Vladimír Kopecký was not a member of any artistic association in the 1960s and painting was initially a completely private activity for him. At his first solo exhibition at the Václav Špála Gallery in Prague in 1970 he presented himself as a painter and also in 1988 and 1997 he exhibited only paintings.Václav Erben, Several Notes on Vladimír Kopecký's Exhibition, in: Vladimír Kopecký, 1999, p. 19 He exhibited the glass for the first time only at his retrospective in 1999.Martin Dostál, in: Vladimír Kopecký, Storm and Calm, 2014, p. 18 The sadness, skepticism, embarrassment and despair that drove his work in the Normalization 1970s.,Vladimír Kopecký, 1999, in: Palata O (ed.), 2007 led to the necessity to control emotions with reason and to create a firm order in the imageHlaváčková M, 2004, pp. 3-6