Ivan Kolman

The glass artist and sculptor Ivan Kolman has gained fame in the world of art above all as the creator of unique, cut-glass and etched-glass images, unparalleled in the world either as an art or craft.

As an admirer of the work of Jiří Trnka, Kolman contemplated studying film after graduating from high school. In the end, he decided to study glass art at the studio of the renowned glass artist and sculptor Stanislav Libenský from 1962 to 1968 at the Academy of Arts Architecture and Design in Prague. In 1967, before completing his studies, he attended the Royal College of Art in London for a short period of time (he returned to Great Britain to study in 1980). In the same year he participated in the 1967 International and Universal Exposition – Expo 67 – in Montreal. Thanks to Skloexport, a Liberec company founded in 1948, which dealt with the import and export of glass products, Kolman could exhibit his work almost continuously, even during the 1970s and 1980s (exhibiting in what was at that time, the unfavourable west). For almost fifteen years he taught at the Technical College and College of Further Education in Jablonec nad Nisou.

Kolman's unique method lies in his work with flat panes of glass which he decorates with V-shaped cuts and sandblasting. Kolman then arranges the resulting relief work, which is carefully sketched out beforehand, in contrast with the surrounding dark background, thus accentuating the silky matt finish of the cut itself. He applies his technique not only to pictures of “traditional format”, but also to several large panels in architecture (e.g. shop fronts or the four-metre composition Praha (Prague), composed of several separate sheets of glass, for the department of telecommunication in Prague in 1986).

Kolman turns to music for inspiration for motifs for his pictures which are formally on the border between abstract art and reality. In the past, he was influenced by the world of birds. The leitmotif of his current artwork is the human head expressing various emotions (e.g. Vezír (Vizier), Lazar (Lazarus), Duch (Spirit), Smutek (Sorrow) or Prorok (Prophet). Kolman's most prestigious commission was probably that of the “official present” from the ČSSR to Pope John Paul II at the occasion of the canonization of Agnes of Bohemia in 1989.

Currently, Ivan Kolman, lives and works in Liberec where he is a member of the Liberec Association of Artists. He is constantly developing his technique and experimenting with the complementary technique of vacuum plating. He also devotes some of his time to helping the physically disabled artist Petr Šrámek who paints with his feet, and lives and works in an institute for the disabled in Hodkovice nad Mohelkou.
 

1979
Decoration of Hotel Morava
Loděnická 13, Pohořelice

1986
Decoration of International and intercity telephone exchange and telegraph centre (composition Prague)
Fibichova 1500/21, Prague-Žižkov

1989
State present to Pope John Paul II at the occasion of the canonization of Agnes of Bohemia

1990
Decoration of Hotel Merkur
Anenské Square. 4340/8, Jablonec nad Nisou