The Armenian people have always been hospitable especially to those artists, who have shown great interest in our history and culture. Jaroslava Brychtová is one of those artists, whose positive energy, intellect and great art has become a thing of great interest and curiosity among both the Armenian artists and ordinary people.
“I am honored to present our art here, in Armenia, a country with remarkable cultural tradition and history. The Central European country that I come from is quite small, too, and it is my impression that people here and in my country have similar historical experiences, and therefore they should understand each other well”. J. Brychtová The exhibition Silhouettes of the Тown” opened at the Cafesjian Center for the Arts in Yerevan on September 11 in the presence of artist Jaroslava Brychtová herself.
It represents their response to the earthquake that struck Armenia at the end of 1988, leaving many of its regions in ruins and thousands of its people dead. Through their novel treatment of the theme, they turned the silhouettes of devastated towns and cities into symbols, in a graphic retake of reality with a refined sensitivity for the subject and the material: “We all still remember very well the years of renewed hope, 1985-1990. This was a time when we in Czech Republic eagerly followed the changes in the Soviet Union, and it is with empathy and sorrow that we heard also about all the turmoil and tragedies to which your country was exposed at that time and afterwards, especially the earthquake of 1988”.
Jaroslava Brychtová was born in 1924, in Železný Brod, Czechoslovakia, to a family of a sculptor and a glass artist, actively involved in founding and developing of Czech glass industry in 1918 and afterwards. She attended the Studio of Applied Sculpture and Engraving in Stone and Glass headed by Professor Karel Štipl. Because she had a preference for three-dimensi onal sculpture, she moved to the studio of Professor Jan Lauda at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1952 she completed her studies.
After having founded the artistic glass studio at the glass factory in Železný Brod Jaroslava Brychtová and her husband Stanislav Libenský began to work together. “My husband Stanislav and I had our own scheme of collaboration. He was the painter and creator of most our sculptures, and I was the sculptor, who transformed his visions and painting into a clay model. Then we converted the model into real glass sculpture, together with the local craftsmen in the studio. In our sculptures we experienced the principle of “inner luminosity”, based on the natural properties of glass as light passes through it. It represented the fulfillment of a quest for a new and distinctive style, and by which we had made an uncompromising breakthrough — a semantic shift that in its purity and simplicity could be understood as a rare manifestation in the history of art. We used that inner modeling, modified according to the requirements of the task at hand, to produce free-standing, colored stained-glass windows and reliefs”.
“Silhouettes of the Town” is the second exhibition of the couple at the Cafesjian Center for the Arts. The first exhibition, “Libenský Brychtová for Armenia”, opened at CCA in November 2009, and it demonstrates the abstract power and sculptural force of Libenský Brychtová’s work. The two exhibitions are mere fragments of the overall Gerard L. Cafesjian collection, which contains over one hundred pieces by the celebrated couple.
“This extraordinary body of work by Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová is not only the core of the Cafesjian Collection, but also the invaluable treasure shared in the Cafesjian Legacy for Armenia”, said Otto Theuer, Cafesjian Museum Foundation Trustee. “It remains unchallenged as a technical and aesthetic achievement of the first order, not only in the realization of glass as a fine art medium, but in its unlimited potential for human expression”.