Connected by Glass – New Exhibition in the Museum of Ancient Glass

The exhibition is organized with the help of the Society of Hungarian Glass Artists and represents another important exhibition in a series of major events organized by the Museum of Ancient Glass in Zadar. The exhibited works of Hungarian artists show all the diversity of works in glass as an artistic medium, where many different works in glass can be seen, as well as the same amount of artistic inspiration and styles, delight in glass processing, experimentation, innovation and finally connection, connection through glass.

The curators of the exhibition are Jadranka Belevski, who is also the author of the exhibition catalog, Bernadett Hegyvári and Péter Gergely Lendvai, representatives of the Society of Hungarian Glass Artists.

– The exhibition "Connected by Glass" is important because it is part of our series of international collaborations. This is the third major international collective exhibition. The first one was "Touch of Glass", it was of Scandinavian design and Scandinavian artists, a great exhibition. Then there was "Zadar meets Milan", something completely different, Italian design and artists, and now we are showing Hungarian glass. In my opinion, this is a great exhibition, firstly because we have brought together 48 artists with their works. That means 48 different inspirations, ideas and innovations. We are all connected by glass, as the name of the exhibition says, but each artist works in a different manner. I think that in some way it will be educational and, of course, people know something about glass as an artistic medium. Concerning glass blowing, however, they have never seen many of these techniques and types of glass, nor can they imagine that a work of art can be made from it - Jadranka Belevski, the museum's documentary adviser, told us on the occasion of the opening.

Belevski mentioned that this exhibition is also important because we do not have much contact with Hungarian art, this contemporary one in particular.

– It is at the top world level, and, on the other hand, we are showing the wealth of a country that has a long tradition of glassmaking. Both in Murano and in Venice, Hungarian glass is exhibited, alongside Czech and Italian glass, so we have managed to raise it to a very nice level.. – she added.

Along with the exhibition, an extensive catalog was published, which can be obtained at the Museum, and it contains everything about the artists exhibiting and as such represents a very important written and remaining document. It consists of 96 pages, listing all the exhibited works, biographies of the artists as well as the statements from each one of them about the work itself and the inspiration.  

On behalf of the Society of Hungarian Glass Artists, Péter Gergely Lendvai spoke at the opening. This is his second time exhibiting in Zadar. The first time was in 2018 when he held his solo exhibition "Guardians of the Spirit".

– We came up with the idea of bringing more Hungarian glass artists and since then we have been working on this exhibition and we have finally come here. This is an exhibition about friendship, I think, because the artists who work here work from the heart and we do the same with this material. This material can be sharp and it can be soft. There are seven of us out of 48 artists here, and it is very important to us that we are here besides everything that is happening, such as, for example, the Glass Week in Venice, which is currently taking place - said Lendvai.