Vladimira Klumpar’s recent sculptures re-examine nature and bring our attention to the enlarged forms and compilations of simple, organic elements. Seeds, leaves, trees, flowers, stems and pods are at the heart of Klumpar’s formal lexicon. The objects speak to us through the artist’s use of color and light as well as the measured translucence which allows us to enter the piece. In her most successful work, we strain to resolve the perceptual distortion of simultaneously viewing the simple organic surfaces while our eye travels through the mass of the visible interior to reach the opposite plane. Guided by the lush curves and subtle twists of Klumpar’s ‘alter-nature’ exteriors we move within the pieces. In her Botanical Subjects, glass is the life-sustaining fluid—the sap, the water, the blood.

Klumpar began her studies at the Specialized Glassmaking High School in Zelezny Brod and finished nearly a decade later at the renowned Academy of Applied Arts in Prague under the tutorship of Professor Stanislav Libensky, the mentor to three generations of artists. She fully absorbed the Libensky lessons about the malleable properties of glass—the interior and exterior form, the color/light density—but also, his less often discussed teachings of the importance of nature as the ultimate guide to authentic shape and proportion. In a world in turmoil, nature represents solace, stability and, perhaps, eternity.

Building upon Libensky & Brychtova’s concepts of color-light and optical geometry, she has risen through her work to stake a sculptural terrain of her own. Kin to the esthetic of her schoolmate, the distinguished Libensky disciple Ivan Mares, Vladimira Klumpar finds the exquisiteness in the ordinary and elevates it to the extraordinary.

For much of her adult life this Czech born and raised sculptor has been a citizen of the world. Living between homes in the United States, Mexico and the Czech Republic, she has traveled extensively and trekked in the high mountains of Tibet and Nepal. Klumpar is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Her work has been widely exhibited in Europe and the Americas and is represented in public and private collections on both continents.