Loredano Rosin

Artist’s memories

I am a member of the last generation of Murano glass masters who were trained in the ancient artisan tradition. For better or worse, we were not free to choose a profession.

Constrained as we were by geography, by the mentality of the times and, above all, by economic necessity, we began working glass as adolescents. It is only now that I can fully appreciate just how fortunate I was.

A boy on my first day at the job, I was assigned to a piazza, a work group of four or five men who labored together in front of the mouth of the glass furnace for ten to twelve hours a day. My colleagues, thus, became a surrogate family and the master (head of the work group) was, in those days, the head of the family.

My first master was Romano Zanelli called Cocui Saor (nicknames which distinguish one branch of an extended family from another are a Murano tradition which, with the spread of literacy, is fast fading). He was a skilled glass worker and kind to me. I can see him yet: an elderly man seated at the masters bench, relaxed, working debonair and without fear while tongues of flames leapt from the furnace and other glass workers moved about him with spheres of glowing molten glass. From this magma he drew the stuff to create roses for traditional Venetian chandeliers. I had no doubts. The surreal images and the creative possibilities of the world of glass fascinated me, and I wanted to be like him. When I was only twelve I was already working more than ten hours a day. After working those long hours I had little time or energy left for play or to express my creativity outside the work environment. However, bit-by-bit, during slack time and almost as a game, I began to play with the glass and, thus, learned to manipulate the material. After my first experience, I worked with several other glass masters on Murano as an apprentice then as a journeyman, through them I learned all the techniques of Murano tradition, but I never did work with any of the famous masters celebrated for their glass sculpture.

Blowing glass didn't satisfy or fulfill me, I was drawn to the process of working and shaping solid glass in the mass. For a brief period when I first became maestro, there was a great call for solid table top pieces. Making these figures gave me both the possibility to earn a living and, also, to begin to apply the techniques I had learned for working solid glass. In 1965 a grand opportunity came my way: the Fucina Degli Angeli was looking for a young master ready to carry out some important projects in glass. At that time I was a partner with my brother Mirco in our own glassworks Artvet, but the proposal intrigued me, not the least because the first piece to realize was Pablo Picasso 's Nymphs and Fauns. At that moment my collaboration with the Fucina Degli Angeli was born.

The transformation of designs by world famous artists into sculpture in glass was a great challenge, especially because the artists had not accounted for the technical problems of working glass and, therefore, I had to develop new methods and systems for each piece. The success granted me is due, above all, to my traditional training which gave me experience with all the possibilities of the material, and to the fact I had never worked for other glass sculptors. Had I trained with another glass sculptor I would have imbued his techniques and methods.

As happened, I was free to experiment and innovate without fixed ideas about the construction of sculpture in glass. Ten year later I was able to open my own studio where I began to develop designs and create works which transmit my way of seeing and experiencing the world.

My preference is for the figurative which I feel gives me the greatest scope to depict human kind and human sentiments. Love and friendship, and couples in general, are recurrent themes. Paired forms help to create a visual and emotional tension that I seek in my work and maintain an architectural equilibrium in even the most abstract pieces.

I have a deep rapport with glass. It seems that the glass itself wants me to shape it, to stroke it, to dominate it with both mental and physical force until we unite in creating the extensions of my will. I do not violate the nature of the glass, nor do I torture it. That is why it responds to me when I forge it and give it life.

1991 November 11th.

Loredano Rosin has exhibited widely in personal and collective shows in Europe, Japan and North America.

'Il Presepe Incantato', 'The Enchanted Nativity', which he created in collaboration with the Sicilian artist, Pippo Madè, has been displayed at the Cathedral of Monreale in Palermo, 1983 - 84, and the Cathedral of Assisi, 1984 - 85, and is the subject of the book, Da Murano a Monreale by Aldo Gerbino and Giuseppe di Nunno. He has been invited to demonstrate and teach the techniques of solid free-hand glass sculpture in Venezuela, Romania, the United States and Canada.

In July - August, 1988, he taught the first course ever offered by Pilchuck Glass School in solid free-hand glass sculpture in collaboration with his brother, Dino and the America glass artist, William Morris.

In April, 1989, he was invited to be a lecturer by the Glass Art Society Conference in Toronto, where he gave hot glass demonstrations to an international audience of specialists in glass. Pieces that he has made form part of the permanent collections of several major Museums including the Museum of Fine Arts the Boston, the Museum of Modem Art the New York, the Museum of Art - Philadelphia, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the Museum of Art the New Orleans.

Loredano Rosin dies in the Venice lagoon through head injuries sustained after colliding with a mooring post on his water-scooter. His tragic death marks the loss of one of glass-art's greatest innovators.

Taken from www.rosinartestudio.com