BIOGRAPHY

Martin Rosol
Glass Art Work

Born June 7, 1956 in Prague

229 Barnard Road,
Shelburne Falls,
MA 01370

Martin Rosol came to the United States in 1988 to pursue his career as a glass sculptor, a path unavailable to him in Czechoslovakia before Vaclav Havel and the Velvet Revolution transformed the country.

Rosol, like many Czech glassworkers, learned his trade in a Company School, which trains craftsman to execute limited edition designs for art glass manufacturers. Though the arrangement provided employment for many, it did not provide young artist with the degree required by the old regime to sell art. So Rosol, who had been designing and making sculptures while working in a glass factory, shipped his work out of the country. Before long, his sculptures were being exhibited in Europe and in the United States, and in 1981 he was awarded the Bavarian State Prize for Glass Sculpture in Munich. In 1986 he left Czechoslovakia for Austria and two years later he came to the United States.

Rosol’s sculptures - works of elegant design and craftsmanship – obviously come from skilled and meticulous hands. Each is made with several pieces precisely cut from blocks of crystal constructed in an architectural form, after selected surfaces have been sandblasted. The range of translucence and the varied reflective surfaces, the clarity of the crystal, and the icy gloss of sand-texture create enclosed spaces within the polished structures. With their architectural forms designed to contain illumination, they are indeed monuments to light.