Richard Craig Meitner

Richard Craig Meitner (1949), American artist, intellectual and poetic. His work reflects a variety of influences and ideas, from Japanese textiles and Italian painting and applied arts to science and the natural world. The colorless glass surfaces of his quixotic objects often incorporate assorted materials such as rust, enamel, bronze, tile, paint, and print. Meitner revels in unusual juxtapositions of forms and ideas, in unanswered questions, and in the intersections between art and science.

Bron 1949; Philadelphia, USA， studied from 1970-72 at the University of California, Berkley, USA under Marvin Lipofsky and from 1972-75 at the Department of Studio Glass at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, The Netherlands with Sybren Valkema. In 1976, he started together with Mieke Groot ‘General Glass” one of the first glass studio’s in the Netherlands, which was dismantled in 2013.

From 1981-2000, he taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and designed for different glass factories (Leerdam Glass Factory, Leerdam, The Netherlands; Sarner Cristal, Zurich, Switzerland, EOS, Murano, Italy, Val Saint Lambert, Charleroi, Belgium).

His intellectual, poetic, and always changing work reflects a variety of influences and ideas, from Japanese textiles and Italian painting and applied arts to science and the natural world. The colorless glass surfaces of his quixotic objects often incorporate assorted materials such as rust, enamel, bronze, tile, paint, and print. Meitner reveals in unusual juxtapositions of forms and ideas, in unanswered questions, and in the intersections between art and science.

Meitner started producing classical multi-colored vessels, plates and flasks in small formats. His blown pieces, starting from the end of the 1970’s were decorated with Japanese letters or signs and indicated already a tendency to experiment with forms and expressions. From the 1980’s, his work began to become larger and more complex in form, with the use of enamels on the glass container. He started to develop his own characteristics idiom with coloration and specific images. The containers began to deform and pieces were added to the vessel. The enameled decoration on opposing exterior surfaces induced trompe l'oeil impressions of 3-dimensional imaging. At the same time he started to work with ensembles of containers and the addition of texts to the surface.

From that time, different series with coloration were developed according this philosophy like the Kimono series, in which the form of the vase was inspired by a Japanese kimono or the “Chagrin et Plaisirs d’Amour” Series, a colorful set of vases with different feelings.

From the 1980’s, he also started to combine different materials with glass. The impressive series “Violation of the base” is one of these iconic works that is a masterpiece of the studio glass movement. Other materials that were combined with glass containers were glass itself, ceramics, wood and metals.

From 1989, as the result of an injury Meitner could no longer blow the glass pieces himself and began to work together with other artists and craftsman to produce his work.

From the 1990’s, the work of Meitner becomes more and more sculptural. Still combining containers with different objects, he used recurring objects like the branch, the rabbit, the flower, the candle and the carrot. At the same time he discovered borosilicate glass, which enabled him to create complex forms, which are not possible with standard glass. He also used glass for the construction of wall pieces like a painting. The object is no longer in need of a carrier or support but can hang on the wall. In 1990, he also worked together with the glass factory Val Saint Lambert, producing some unique pieces based on the history of the factory like “Back to the present, the Metternich variation’.

A landmark exhibition was his solo exhibition “Cold Fusion” in the Museum Boerhaave in Leiden, the Netherlands in 1997, in which he made a tribute to his family member Lise Meitner, a physicist who worked on radioactivity and nuclear physics. The works reflect his interest in science by combining objects of science and nature with art.

In the late 1990’s, he produced a series of borosilicate bottles, that contained enameled glass objects like drinking glasses, animals, but also texts. The work ‘arts and crafts’ was also a reaction to the art world stating that arts and craft were both forms of art.

He experimented further with the use of enamel transfers on glass, a technique he developed during his artist-in-residency in Sars-Poteries, France. This led to a series of works on wooden bases which he then faced with tiles of imprinted enameled glass on which blown glass objects were placed. This culminated later in a group of sculptures shown at the Palazzo Ducale in 1998 during the exhibition “Venezia Aperto Vetro” in Venice, Italy.

Also, the ‘object trouvé’ made an entrance in his work, with the addition of found pieces in different materials.

In the first part of the 2000’s, he produced a number of objects that are covered with a layer of rusted iron. Also for the first time, he used the optical characteristics and the weight of water to construct the heavy foot for the sculpture. His visits to Senegal and the contact with the Senegalese behind-glass-painter Malainy Sow led to a series of vase-like forms that ‘contained’ behind-glass paintings, figuring people and objects.

At the end of the 2000’s, he started to experiment with different coloration techniques on his sculptures. The use of fluorescent glass colors led to a joyful series of compositions, reflecting the balloons of a circus clown. This new color made it also possible to create a whole range of colorful sculptures with humanoid and anthropologic forms, while the vases show a “period folle” in terms of very expressionist decorations.

From the beginning of the 2012’s, he started again to make transparent 3-dimensional pieces in clear borosilicate glass that could stand as an individual piece or be put on the wall followed by colorful combinations of glass and other materials. He discovered new staining methods, that led to colorful sculptures.

Besides these unique pieces, Meitner has also designed a number of multiples and serica, which were produced by different factories or individual organizations. They reflect the themes that he developed during the time span these multiples were designed and produced.

In the 1970’s, he designed a series for the ‘Glasfabriek Leerdam” in opaline glass with a black border executed as 3 cylinders, one plate and one sphere (1979).

In 1992, he produced the serica “Reticello” in an edition of 100 pieces in his own studio consisting of a container with black coloration and a golden spike. 

In 1993, he designed for the Austrian glass factory Stolzle Oberglas a number of forms based on the vase concept. These were produced in the permutations offered by the choice for blue, green or black opaque glass with a contrasting underlay of white, and also in those same 3 colors as underlay with the outside surface being white, each in an edition of 400.

Eddio ed Adam (God and Adam) was produced in 1994 as the “beursobject” for the Leerdam glass fair. The piece consisting of two parts made in neodymium glass. The piece is executed in a pale bluish transparent mauve with one of them topped with yellowish amber, a color that was lost in production of the Leerdam factory but re-discovered by Meitner. This candleholder is based on the painting “Creation of Adam” by Michelangelo, in which the finger of God touches Adam represented by the amber color.

In 1995, he designed the Tatlin vase which was produced by the Swiss glass factory Sarner Cristal, a combination of 2 pieces in green glass inspired by the constructions of the Russian artist Tatlin.

In 1996 a multiple consisting of a blown transparent container decorated with white stripes and a black rim containing a carrot was produced reflecting one of his favorite themes.

He also produced a combination of a wooden man, used in art classes, holding a glass cylinder that functions as an oil lamp standing in a glass container.

In 2001, he was invited by the “Vrienden van Modern Glass” to develop the members object. "Les Amis", consists of three separate, matching blown shapes, designed together with Mieke Groot, together with behind glass-painting done by Malainy Sow in which the three artists and the glass object itself are all depicted represented . It was executed in a limited edition of 65.

In 2007, he designed "Verdraaid!!!" ("Twisted!"), a clear crystal pendant vase suspended by a twisted clear and white glass ‘rope’ and executed by Royal Leerdam / the Netherlands in a limited edition of 99.

In 2008, he again was invited by the “Vrienden van Modern Glass” to develop the members object. The object “Dvaas” reflects a memory of a child’s play: almost forgotten that a child play is nice but also a little bit naughty. It was executed in a limited edition of 91.

The intellectual, poetic, and always changing work of American artist Richard Craig Meitner is the subject of the newest exhibition in the Masters of Studio Glass series, on view April 4 – October 18, 2009. This lecture is an opportunity to hear the artist discuss his work, which reflects a variety of influences and ideas, from Japanese textiles and Italian painting and applied arts, to science and the natural world. The colorless glass surfaces of his objects often incorporate assorted materials such as rust, enamel, bronze, tile, paint, and print.
https://hisour.com/artist/richard-craig-meitner/