Palo Macho

He studied at the Secondary Industrial Glass School in Nový Bor, Czechoslovakia, 1980–1983, and at the Secondary School of Glassmaking, Kamenický Šenov, Czechoslovakia, 1983–1986. Graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (VŠVU), Bratislava, Slovakia, 1995. He also studied at the École de Beaux-Arts, Saint-Étienne, France, 1993, and at the Cité International des Arts, Paris, France, 1997. In 1994–1998 he taught at the Secondary Glass School (Stredná odborná škola sklárska) in Lednické Rovne, Slovakia. Since 2011 he has been working as Assistant Professor in the Studio of Glass at the Department of Applied Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava.

He has participated in many individual and group exhibitions in Slovakia, Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Latvia, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, the UK, and the USA, including: the Coburg Glass Prize, Coburg, Germany, 2006, 2014; the Finnish Glass Museum, Riihimäki, Finland, 2007, 2010, 2016; Glasmuseum Frauenau, Germany, 2011; Blood (with Jana Hojstričová), the Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava, 2012–2013; Crossing Points (with Jana Hojstričová, Patrik Illo and Zuzana Graus Rudavská), Cisterne – Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2013; Beyond the Body (with Jana Hojstričová), SiC! gallery, BWA Wrocław – Gallery of Contemporary Art, “Play with Glass” – European Glass Festival, Wrocław, Poland, 2015; Glasmuseum Hentrich, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2016; S12 Open Access Studio and Gallery, Bergen, Norway, 2016; European Glass Context, Bornholm, Denmark, 2016.

Palo Macho is one of the most original contemporary Slovak glass artists, known for his innovative approach to glass. The uniqueness of his position is that he has worked long-term with stained glass and glass; in this area already he has achieved remarkable results at home and is respected abroad. As a painter and glassmaker, he mixes painting, which is considered a free art, with glass, traditionally regarded as one of the applied arts. He works mostly with sheet glass by forming and deforming it in its hot state, and this enables him to create reversible paintings–reliefs, picture–objects. He cooperates with Jana Hojstričová, a photographer – they worked together on the Invisible Skin project, based on a combination of melted glass and photo slides.

Palo Macho has published two collections of poetry. “Strelné modlitby” (“Firing Prayers”), 1995, and “Mesiac na červeno” (“Moon in Red”), 2006.