Page 45 - Montague Gallery Lino Tagliapietra Timeless Show

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Tagliapietra is celebrated for his use of murrine1, the cross-sections cut from colored glass rods that he makes for most of his work as part of the lengthy process of designing and creating. The five works in this show from the Aquilone series, named after the vividly-hued kites he remembers flying as a young boy, embody a lightness, fluidity and transparence that is created in part by the way the oval murrine elongate and open up in the blowing process. In one teardrop-shaped vase from 2019, the fluid forms that cascade down the piece’s surface suggest the opening bells of multicolored flowers, their shadowy interiors teasingly hidden from view. In two other Aquilone pieces from the same year, Tagliapietra has used a more limited palette-- shades of blue, or glowing orange-red. This strategy foregrounds the graceful ballet of the murrine’s jostling, cell-like forms, suspended in the clear glass, as do the strikingly simple forms of the pieces.
Similarly, the open forms of the three monumental Florencia bowls from 2018 and 2020 allow the murrine to draw the viewer in. Created by layering and folding ribbons of cane to create a petal-like structure, these murrine ‘flowers’ suggest vivid clustered blossoms. The bowl’s open shape casts equally-colorful shadows, an effect Tagliapietra clearly anticipates.
A 2020 example from the Masai series combines multiple elements in shades of red and orange, their sharply elongated shapes emphasized by vertical bands of color. Inspired by the shields used by the Masai peoples of Kenya and Tanzania, these forms are always presented by Tagliapietra in groups, whether installed on the wall, hung as a chandelier or assembled, as they are here, into the striking form of a freestanding sculpture.
Avventurine Secret Garden (2020) is a mesmerizing wall installation of seven oversized leaf forms made of aventurine glass, a unique material developed in Venice in the seventeenth century. Across each leaf’s cupped, undulating surface, layers of parallel threads of reddish gold cast delicate shadows on the wall.The word aventurine comes from the Italian expression all’avventura, meaning by chance, referring to both this material’s accidental discovery and to the complicated process required to create it. Copper is added to the molten glass, which must then be cooled very slowly, allowing the metal’s crystals to form.
Avventurine Secret Garden comes out of combination of consummate skill and constant innovation. Like all of Tagliapietra’s work, these delicate, rippling leaves embody his desire to draw us in to find our own interpretation. As he puts it: “if a viewer will stop and focus on every single detail and imagine something in their head, my goal was reached.”
1 Murrine are patterns or images made by combining different colors of glass and pulling them out in to a long thread or cane, then cutting the cane into thin cross sections.
Lino Tagliapietra • TIMELESS 45