Ivana Šrámková

Ivana Šrámková (Czech Republic, born 1960), Sitting Nude (Buddha), 2004, cast glass. Gift of Judy Allen and Jim Hummer, 2014.99.

Ivana Šrámková is among the significant Czech artists working in cast glass who are responsible for keeping glass sculpture relevant to contemporary art. She studied with Stanislav Libensky at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague at a time when Czech glass underwent a dramatic change. The figure reemerged, and expressive forms containing stories, emotion, texture, and color experienced a widespread revival.

Since the late 1980s Šrámková has made full-scale sculptures from carved plaster molds which are then cast in glass. The large sculptures are assembled from sections that interlock like the pieces of a puzzle, engineering and balance binding them together.

Her sculptures contain, simultaneously, intense colored light and monumental ephemeral qualities. Her objects are basic figurative forms, both animal and human, that are reduced to their essence in a language of simple geometric symbols. What makes them accessible is Šrámková’s ability to give them just enough of the archetypal to make them identifiable, just enough gesture to endow them with wit, and just enough reference to make them universal. Her sculptures are positioned comfortably in the timeless continuum of art and artifact.