An Event in the Universe I

Rony Plesl (1965) is the most prominent Czech glass sculptor of our time, and his glass is known across the whole country: he designed the Czech Lion film award statuette, the half-litre beer glasses for Pilsner Urquell and Budweiser Budvar and collections for Moser, and for five years he was artistic director of the Rückl glassworks.

Born in Jablonec nad Nisou, he studied at the glassmaking school in Železný Brod and at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM) under Jiří Harcuba, and spent four years learning from master glassmakers in Venice. Since 2008 he has headed the Glass Studio at UMPRUM, and in 2017 he was appointed professor.

In 2019 he exhibited his one-tonne glass forest Sacred Geometry at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; his installation Trees Grow from the Sky in a Renaissance church in Venice was seen by a hundred and fifty thousand people during the 2022 Biennale, and in 2023 Museum Kampa brought it to Prague, where he also exhibited his drawings for the first time. He has drawn all his life and calls drawing his most personal work: nobody makes glass alone, but a drawing is his and his alone. His works are held in the collections of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, the Moravian Gallery in Brno and the Corning Museum of Glass in the USA.