Fondazione Lino Tagliapietra 2023 — 2024

FONDAZIONE LINO TAGLIAPIETRA

project contact person: Samantha Punis
client: Fondazione Lino Tagliapietra
press office and media relations: AtemporaryStudio
photography: Roberta Orio
period: 2019—2023

Travel has been a constant in the life of master glassmaker Tagliapietra. Born in Venice in 1934, he has been working with glass since becoming an apprentice at the age of eleven. From a young age, he stood out as a unique talent in Murano, earning the title of master glassmaker and mastering the art of glassblowing at just twenty-one years old. His prolific talent on the glass island in the Venetian lagoon, together with his incessant curiosity, soon led him to travel extensively, so much so that in 1979 he made a trip to America and visited Seattle for the first time. It was here that he introduced the students of the Pilchuck School to the traditions of Venetian glass blowing, thus cementing his name in the history of the American glass blowing tradition. Through his teachings, Lino Tagliapietra irrevocably changed the use of glass in America, establishing a new future for this medium, infused with the knowledge and skill of Italian tradition interpreted through a new vibrant energy. His sensitivity and skill made him the most important glass artist known worldwide.

An artistic journey marked by creativity, colour and skill, celebrated across all latitudes and longitudes, which was honoured in Venice in the summer of 2023 — following the 2012 retrospective and the 2019 exhibition at the InGalleria Art Gallery in Murano — with the exhibition curated by the Lino Tagliapietra Foundation together with the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Lino Tagliapietra. L’origine del viaggio, hosted in the renovated rooms of the Ca’ Rezzonico Museum overlooking the Grand Canal.

The exhibition gave rise to the book of the same name, with images taken by Roberta Orio, a blend of documentation and authorial vision. It was presented at the Triennale Milano on 28 February 2024 in the presence of illustrious names from the Italian and international cultural scene: Jean Blanchaert, gallery owner and art critic, Alessandra De Nitto, editorial director of the Fondazione Cologni dei Mestieri d’Arte, Luigi Franchin, gallery owner of The Pool NYC Gallery, Roberta Orio, photographer and co-author of the book. And Lino Tagliapietra, of course.

Conceived as a journey through images, the volume traces the salient stages of an eighty-year journey, from its origins as thought, substance, and matrix from which everything takes life and form, to the journey understood as experience. This is the journey that Lino Tagliapietra has experienced in physical, sometimes metaphorical places, made up of encounters with other artists, creatives, free thinkers, but also with scientists and indigenous tribes. This is the case with MIT and the Hopi, which have given rise to unique works.