This mahogany slant-lid desk is one of three, probably from Salem or Marblehead, Mass., by the same maker. It sold to an absentee bidder for $30,500.
NEW YORK CITY
“Baiaderi,” an Italian term for Oriental dancers, is a celebration of light, color, form and movement. The artists explains, “Color, light and material are transformed into movement – inspired by my love of music and dancing figures – brilliant swirling images fold, twisting, bending – responding one to another.”
The exhibition will feature new elongated forms in multicolored palettes, as well as monochromatic works emphasizing the movement and rhythm of the fused glass threads.
A major museum exhibition of Ms Zynsky’s work was recently on view at the Ebeltoft Glasmuseum in Denmark. The exhibition has traveled to the Correr Museum in Venice through May 5. It will then continue to other venues in Germany and Belgium.
Using her signature filet de verre technique, which she developed in 1982, Zynsky creates richly-colored sculptures through the construction of fused and thermo-formed glass threads. Each unique piece is composed of multiple layers of colored glass fibers that are heated, slumped and formed first in a mold, then freely by hand. Exterior surfaces with vibrant strokes and dynamic gestural qualities are often juxtaposed with interiors of subtly muted monotones.
Author and critic Arthur Danto has written, “In an age in which the relevance of beauty to art is widely questioned, Zynsky’s work is uncompromisingly beautiful. It is, however, what the poet André Breton would have called convulsive beauty. The intensity of adjoined color, the tactile vitality of fluted walls, the swirling energies of shape and pattern are transformed into a luminous whole through the interaction between glass and light.”
Zynsky’s work is represented in numerous public and private collections including: American Craft Museum, New York; Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo, Japan; The Houston Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée des Art Décoratifs du Louvre, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Victoria, Australia; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the White House Collection.
Toots Zynsky was born in 1951 in Boston. She was the first contemporary glass artist to have a piece directly commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She has been the recipient of many awards, including two National Endowment for the Arts grants and has lectured extensively in Europe, the United States and Japan.
Running concurrently, in an adjacent gallery, are solos exhibitions by British glass artist Tessa Clegg and Japanese ceramist Kondo Takahiro.
The gallery, 32 East 67th Street, can be reached at 212-794-8950.
