12TH SYMPOSIUM LITOMYŠL | CZECH REPUBLIC | BELGIUM

NOVEMBER 2, 2025 - JANUARY 24, 2026

FINISSAGE OF THE EXHIBITION – 12th LITOMYŠL SYMPOSIUM | OFFICIAL CATALOGUE LAUNCH

24. LEDNA. 26 | 17:00

With deep sorrow, we announce that Mr. Václav Cígler, a significant Czech artist whose work has left a lasting mark on contemporary art, has passed away.

Only recently, we had the honor of presenting his work in the exhibition “Seeing” at the Miroslav Kubík Gallery in Litomyšl, which became one of his final public artistic presentations.

In the coming days, a condolence book will be available in the gallery for those who wish to honor his memory with a personal message.

A more detailed obituary will follow.

Obituary

A distinguished Czech sculptor, poet, visual artist, and educator Václav Cígler has passed away.
A human being is unrepeatable. A human being is unique.

Václav Cígler
April 21, 1929, Vsetín – January 8, 2026, Prague

At the age of ninety-six, on Thursday, January 8, in Prague, sculptor and educator Václav Cígler passed away. He was the founder of the conceptual perception of glass as an artistic object in an international context. Born on April 21, 1929, in Vsetín, Václav Cígler belongs to the internationally respected generation of artists who emerged at the beginning of the 1960s.

His work focused on sculptural objects made of polished optical glass, designs and realizations of light structures and jewelry, drawings, landscape projects, and architectural compositions. In his artistic practice, he anticipated emerging concepts of contemporary artistic expression, including constructive tendencies, minimalism, land art, light art, and kinetic sculpture.

From 1951 to 1957, he studied at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in the studio of Professor Josef Kaplický. In 1965, he founded the Glass in Architecture Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, which he led until 1979. His works are represented in numerous Czech and international galleries.

For his pioneering work in the field of design, he was symbolically inducted into the Czech Design Hall of Fame in 2018. In 2019, he received the Award of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic for his lifetime achievements, pedagogical work, and undeniable contribution to the visual arts.

From the late 1950s onward, Václav Cígler employed the most demanding glassmaking techniques and technologies. He worked both in free art and in glass design, including technical, functional, architectural, and lighting glass. He was the first in art history to use industrial optical glass as a material for creating a work of art.

He experimented with enlarging the scale of his objects and later with using optical glass as a material for sculpturally conceived, cast, and polished monumental objects of convex–concave forms, as well as lens and prism shapes. His extensive visionary body of work—comprising minimalist or symbolic sculptures made of clear optical and colored glass—was presented last year in a retrospective exhibition entitled “Seeing” at the Miroslav Kubík Gallery in Litomyšl.

Václav Cígler perceived glass as a material with spiritual resonance, one that fascinated him for more than seventy years. His light and glass sculptures focus on the inner experience of light as an immaterial substance, a means of vision, and a source of energy. Glass thus became the central lifelong theme of his work.

Václav Cígler stated:
“For me, glass is a pretext for expressing a different spatial and emotional perception of the world, enriched by the means that this material itself offers—namely optical means—and by the possibilities of its new spatial use.”

“My earliest works, conceived with convex or concave lenses or shaped as triangular prisms with the intention of maximizing the effect of light dispersion into the colors of the spectrum, were derived from blocks of optical glass. Another position of my work consisted of objects whose forms were inspired by organic nature, and finally, a further position involved architectural works, where I expressed myself primarily through glass panels forming walls or screens that define and filter space. These intentions were mostly presented through small-scale models, yet even through changes in scale I suggested compositions of greenhouses, pavilions, sacred spaces, or bridges and walkways over water—always with the intention of working with the human being, with their characteristics and needs, not only physical but above all psychological. I became aware of these sensations through my own experience of landscape and city, and it was predominantly these experiences that inspired my work. The measure was not only art and architecture, but also education and observation of what occurs daily in science and technology. I strive to confront my thinking and intentions with the views and needs of the society in which I live, which has shaped me and for which I wish to be useful—above all in a field that will always be new and exciting to me and inexhaustible in its technological possibilities.”

Václav Cígler was the author of numerous significant works in public space in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the Netherlands. Based on his designs, interiors of Prague metro stations were realized, as well as lighting systems and luminaires, for example in the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava, the House of Culture in Banská Bystrica, and the Sliač Spa. He also contributed to the renovation of the presbytery of the Church of St. Bartholomew in Kolín and created artworks for the Church of the Finding of the Holy Cross in Litomyšl.

Currently, his body-related objects are presented at the contemporary jewelry exhibition Constellations at the Dallas Museum of Art in the United States. As both an artist and educator, Václav Cígler profoundly influenced the thinking and work of several generations of artists.

In the words of American artist, patron, and founder of the Imagine Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, Trish Duggan:

Thank you, Václav, for enriching our world through your work.

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