: Brilliant color and the stunning and fashionable line of
contemporary Venetian glass sparkle in "Murano Glass from the
Olnick Spanu Collection" at the Chrysler Museum of Art through
April 25, 2004. The traveling exhibition, which makes Norfolk its
first stop on a national tour, showcases a remarkable collection
of glass made in Murano, Italy, in the Twentieth and Twenty-First
Centuries.
Over the ages Murano glass would seldom have been described as
subtle. But in the Twentieth Century, glass artists produced
exuberant pieces, bold in line and color with a tactile appeal
that renders them compelling to the eye. These are the examples
that New Yorkers Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu collected and
that are on view. All are vessels of some variety; most are
vases, the form Olnick and Spanu favor.
The earliest piece in the show is the 77/8-inch floral blown
glass vase, "Floreale a murrine," designed by Benvenuto Barovier
in about 1913 for his family company, Artisti Barovier. The vase
is brilliantly colored, ablaze with lively abstract flowers made
from tessarae, tiny slices of glass rods arranged like a mosaic
and blown into a bubble. The masterful combination of clear and
opaque glass gives the piece a vibrant, painterly quality.
Glass is decidedly a family business in Venice. It was an earlier
Barovier, Angelo, who in 1480 began to make lead crystal,
resulting in colorless blown glass.
