Stanislav Libensky

Stanislav Libenský was born in 1921 and was the son of a metal smith. He studied painting and glassmaking at Novy Bor and Zelezny Brod in the 1930’s. He went onto study under Professor Jaroslav Holecek. For some time after he taught at Novy Bor and worked as a designer of glassworks. Libenský went on to attend the Secondary School of Art and the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague.
Jaroslavá Bryctova attended the Prague School of Applied Arts and the the Academy of fine Arts in Prague. It was helpful that her father was the co-founder of the glassmaking school at Zelezny Brod. By 1947 she was making cast glass sculpture that would become the hallmark of their collaborative efforts.

Jaroslav Bryctová and Stanislav Libenský began cooperating together in 1955 and were married in 1963. Libenský was the painter and educator and Bryctova the sculptor with knowledge of factory casting. He painted and sketched the designs while she made the clay models and oversaw the casting. From the beginning it was a perfect fit, each complemented the other with their own unique set of talents and strengths.

Remarkably during the trying years of communist occupation, the Libenský’s received state support to enable them to create monumental works in glass. Perhaps the first true “Fine Art” sculptures in glass. As exemplified by their large scale sculptures a the World’s Fair in Brussels 1958, Expo 67 in Montreal and the “River of Life” in Oscala 1979 which was 22 meters long, 4.5 meters high and consisted of 200 reliefs. Throughout the 1970’s and 80’s this intense team completed a number of important monumental works including the impressive installation at the Corning Museum of Glass (1978-1980). At the end of the communist regime, the Libenský’s created their own independent works and had their first exhibition in the US at Habatat Galleries in 1982. They are now in many museum, private and public collections around the world.

Libensky