Václav Cigler has died. The man who discovered optical glass for art

11 Jan 2026

Václav Cigler at the opening of his drawings exhibition at the Olomouc Museum of Art in March 2019. Photo: MUO – Tereza Hrubá

Czech sculptor, glassmaker, jeweler, architect, and educator Václav Cigler passed away on Thursday, January 8, 2026. He would have been 97 years old this April. Václav Cigler made an indelible mark on the history of world art by being the first to work with optical glass. However, his work is much more diverse, as demonstrated in the first half of 2019 by an extensive exhibition of his drawings at the Olomouc Museum of Art.

“My drawings are architectural drawings, diagrams of temples with floor plans of crosses and labyrinths of petals. My drawings are walking, approaching, movement,” said Václav Cigler at the opening of his exhibition at the Olomouc Museum of Art in 2019.

The exhibition project at the Olomouc Museum of Art included not only an exhibition of Cigler’s drawings, but also artistic interventions at the Archdiocesan Museum in Olomouc (Václav Cigler and Michal Motyčka: Luminously) and at the Archbishop’s Castle and Flower Garden in Kroměříž (Václav Cigler / Michal Motyčka: Externalization). The collaboration also resulted in the publications Cigler Motyčka Tizian and Václav Cigler / Draw i ngs.

Since the 1960s, Václav Cigler has been working with cut optical glass objects. He created glass products and designs for landscaping projects, and also devoted himself to sculpture and architectural projects. Jewelry played a secondary role in his work. He conceived of it as small sculpture, with shapes based on flat or three-dimensional geometric elements. Thanks to his participation in international exhibitions, Cigler had been known around the world since the 1960s. He had a number of significant presentations to his credit, from prestigious exhibitions at the Corning Museum of Glass in the USA, the Triennale in Milan and Expo 58 in Brussels to the Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and Expo 67 in Montreal.

Václav Cigler was born on April 21, 1929, in Vsetín. Between 1939 and 1948, he attended secondary school and then studied at the Higher Technical School of Glassmaking and Secondary School in Nový Bor, specializing in glass engraving, painting, and etching. From 1951 to 1957, he studied at Josef Kaplický’s studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. In the mid-1960s, he founded a studio called Oddelenie skla v architektúre (Department of Glass in Architecture) at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava. He was a pioneer of the conceptual perception of glass as an artistic object in a global context. “I make glass that does not want to be art, but a means of seeing and observing. I make non-technical devices that enlarge, reduce, reflect, and decompose the external environment in terms of light and color,” said Václav Cigler for the Central European Art Database (CEAD), which is being created by the Olomouc Museum of Art.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)