Glasstress

Glasstress is a collateral exhibition of the Venice Biennale of Arts. It has taken place in the 2009 and 2011 editions. The mission of Glasstress is to show how contemporary artists use glass as an incomparable medium for their expression. For a long time, especially in Venice and Murano, glass has been generally associated to decoration, whereas its relevance for outstanding accomplishments by great artists was neglected. The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even, also known as The Large Glass by Marcel Duchamp (1915–23, Philadelphia Museum of Art) might be considered as a seminal milestone. But in recent years an increasing number of artists have taken up working with glass for their creations, and Glasstress is the first initiative aimed at documenting and promoting this trend[1].

Glasstress 2009 (June 6 - November 24), curated by the glass expert Rosa Barovier Mentasti and the art historian Laura Mattioli Rossi, was mainly a historical display of masterpieces of art glass from 1920 to the present times. The rooms of Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti, facing the Canal Grande, hosted artworks by Josef Albers, Man Ray, Anton Pevsner, Jean Arp, Lucio Fontana, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Hamilton, Joseph Kosuth, Louise Bourgeois. Some of the artworks had been expressly made for Glasstress by artists such as Tony Cragg, Jan Fabre, Orlan, and Fred Wilson, who have been invited to work in his glass studio in Murano by Adriano Berengo, the inventor of Glasstress.

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