"Glass is there to be broken" – Ludwik Kiczura

Glass is there to be broken

Artist, teacher, master, and friend – he fell in love with glass in the early '60s, and this LOVE was reciprocated. With passion and emotion he created his first glass objects and, over the years, he mastered the technique of "shaping by hand" and made captivating glass sculptures, both monolithic and openwork.

Ludwik Kiczura has spent half of his life at the furnace with hot glass, and the other half – in the E. Geppert Academy of Art and Design. During his lectures and exercises he passed on to us his knowledge and experience, gained in the glassworks thanks to his numerous experiments.

And he constantly studied. When, from the artists of the younger generation, he "contracted" the techniques of kiln, sanding, and sticking glass, he experimented and with great enthusiasm invariably commented on his failed attempts: "Glass is there to be broken".

In Ludwik Kiczura's studio, on a seven-metre windowsill and like an army on gala parade, stand colourful and proud glass-sculptures. They all testify to his great talent and passion. It is a pity that the signature appearing on them – added at the time of the early youth of many of us – is covered by dust. The dust of oblivion.

And so I am more than pleased that we have been able to borrow some of these works for the exhibition organized at the BB Gallery in the 4th Play with Glass – European Glass Festival.

"Glass is there to be broken". I hope that the objects of glass made by my Teacher and Master will delight the eyes of successive generations of admirers of his work.

Kazimierz Pawlak


LUDWIK KICZURA
Born in 1934 in Lwów. Glass artist. Co-creator of the "Wrocław school of glass". In the years 1954–1960 he studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław (now the E. Geppert Academy of Art and Design) under Prof. Stanisław K. Dawski. Since 1960 he has been associated with his alma mater as a teacher, and longtime head of the Department of Glass. He was involved in art and utilitarian glass and also artistic printwork. His works are in museums and private collections in Poland and abroad.































Photographs: Stanisław  Sielicki – Archive of prof. Ludwik Kiczura

Opening of the exhibition – photos