VENICE.- On display for the first time in Venice over 300 glass objects from the renowned collection belonging to Christina and Bruno Bischofberger, featuring many works of art by the most important Finnish designers of the 20th century.
The exhibition Glass from Finland in the Bischofberger Collection, curated by Kaisa Koivisto, curator at The Finnish Glass Museum, Riihimäki, and Pekka Korvenmaa, professor at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture (Finland), will open to the public on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice on April 13th, 2015.
This important exhibition features the best of Finnish design thanks to the unprecedented loan of 322 glass works from the Bischofberger Collection, Switzerland. The beauty of artistic glass features masterpieces by the foremost 20th century Finnish designers: Aino and Alvar Aalto, Arttu Brummer, Kaj Franck, Göran Hongell, Gunnel Nyman, Timo Sarpaneva, Oiva Toikka and Tapio Wirkkala.
The exhibition will offer an unrivalled opportunity to view some very rare objects, often unique or early production pieces, which Christina and Bruno Bischofberger have collected with passion and insight over the past forty years. A collection that, as stated by the curators, is a mirror of the soul and spirit of its collectors. “The primary criterion of choice in this Collection is aesthetic quality. The majority of the items are modernist art glass, objects that became internationally renowned and made Finland known abroad.”
In the early Twenties, after becoming independent from what was about to become the Soviet Union, Finland used design as its manifesto, in an attempt to establish its autonomy and thus its cultural sovereignty. Some of the country’s greatest designers, who had connections with the international artistic movements, began to use glass to create works of art that blended tradition, experimentation and technique.
The year 1932 is a good chronological starting point for the Collection, for it was then that the five leading Finnish names of the 1930s, spouses Aino and Alvar Aalto, Arttu Brummer, Göran Hongell, Gunnel Nyman designed glass objects for the first time and Finnish glass started to be exhibited all over the world, spreading the skills and creativeness of those who would be considered as the visionary masters of Scandinavian design. Their works were put on display in numerous exhibitions, including the International Exhibition Arts et Techniques dans la Vie moderne in Paris in 1937 and the Milan Triennals of 1933 and 1936, where glass works from Northern Europe were shown to the public for the first time. While Swedish glass was well known at this time, Finnish glass was not yet.
In the early Fifties, after the hiatus due to World War II and the three wars in which Finland was involved between 1939 and 1945 (the Winter War, the Continuation War and the Lapland War), the Finnish design laid the foundations of what would become “the golden age” of Finnish glass. This was also made possible by the impressive industrial growth of the country, resulting in the manufacturing and distribution of everyday life objects. As the curators of the exhibition point out – “Finnish glass started to be appreciated during the 1950s for the quality of its manufacturing process, which on the one hand ensured its high artistic value, and on the other fostered its industrial production and ensuing commercial success.”
In order to meet the functional and psychological demands of its users, designers started producing objects and works of art that were both aesthetically sophisticated and that mainly referred to nature by the free use of organic shapes and curves, often inspired by Finland’s lush vegetations and unpolluted nature. Along with internationally acclaimed designers such as Alvar Aalto, other artists became the new stars of Scandinavian design, such as Kaj Franck, Gunnel Nyman, Timo Sarpaneva and Tapio Wirkkala, who is considered to be the symbol of the international success of post-war Finnish design. From then on Finnish design was exported all over the world, reaching and influencing the United States. America had already had a chance to meet Scandinavian design – mainly from Sweden – at an earlier stage, when in the early 1920s Frederik Lunning opened a Georg Jensen shop on Fifth Avenue.
Furthermore, the attention that the international press gave to Scandinavian design played an important role in determining its worldwide success: Italian architect Gi Ponti, founder of the magazine Domus, became strongly committed to the promotion of Finnish glass. Italian and Finnish design were linked by a common ideal of functionality and aesthetics, which led to several collaborations between designers and companies from both countries, as in the fruitful case of Venini with the Finnish artists Tapio Wirkkala and Timo Sarpaneva.
Exhibitions such as Nordic Applied Art in Stockholm in 1946, the Milan Triennals of 1951, 1954 and 1957 and the Helsingborg Exhibition – also known as H55 – in 1955, where Timo Sarpaneva acted as exhibition designer, were received with great praise by critics, and contributed to the resurgence of Finland from the ashes of the war.
Finland received equally many prizes in 1951, 1954 and 1957, establishing once and for all the importance of Finnish design.
During the Sixties and Seventies, color and energy became the main focus of Finnish design; the glass works became colorful and were given elaborate shapes. Oiva Toikka designed glass birds, which became Iittala’s iconic brand. Through his irreverent approach to the glass medium and tradition, Toikka represents the connection between the golden era of the fabulous Fifties and a more contemporary design.
Thanks to a thorough documentation of the various historical periods, the works on display at the exhibition Glass from Finland in the Bischofberger Collection take the visitors from the crystal-clear and first colored glass works of the early Thirties to the more flamboyant and at times “psychedelic” production of the Seventies.
The creations by the sculptor and designer Tapio Wirkkala are particularly interesting, as the big bowl Ultima Thule, in which glass appears like a block of ice with dripping surfaces, producing an interplay of transparencies and reflections that are almost abstract, and the bottle designed specifically for Finlandia Vodka, which remains one of his best and most famous pieces in the world.
Whether the objects are fun, practical or simply decorative, all the works on display are the result of a creative force and a technical know-how that have their origins in ancient times but that have shown that the glass medium can be used in dynamic and original ways, producing shapes and objects that have rewritten the history of the Scandinavian as well as of the international design. To quote the motto of Iittala: “We don’t just create beautiful objects. We believe in timeless design that will never be thrown away.”
The exhibition Glass from Finland in the Bischofberger Collection will run from 13 April to 2 August 2015, from 10 am to 7 pm (free entrance, closed on Wednesdays).
