Zbigniew Horbowy

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Zbigniew Horbowy (born October 28, 1935 in Łanczyn ; † June 17, 2019 in Polanica-Zdrój ) was a Polish artist and industrial designer , professor at the Institute for Ceramics and Glass , leading Polish glass designer. He was rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław (1999–2005). Creator of his own design school, known as the Wroclaw Glass Design School, closely associated with Polanica-Zdrój (Altheide Bad, former County of Glatz ) and Lower Silesia .

Life

The professor was born in Łanczyn (now Nadwórna Rajon , Iwano-Frankiwsk Oblast ) in the Polish eastern regions . After the Second World War he moved from Kolomyja to Kargowa (German Unruhstadt, before the war the Züllichau-Schwiebus district ). Convinced by a friend, he began studying in the glass studio at the Art School (College of Fine Arts) in Wroclaw. He finished his diploma thesis in 1959 in the "Sudeten" glassworks in Szczytna (Rückers) near Polanica-Zdrój. He first worked as a glass designer in the same glassworks. He owes a lot to his friend glassmakers, from whom he learned a lot.

Since 1975 head of the experimental designer workshop in the “Barbara” glassworks in Polanica-Zdrój. Between 1978 and 1989 he was the organizer and commissioner of glass exhibitions in the Glatz Fortress .

The artistic work in the two glassworks can be seen as the fulfillment of artistic life. It became clear to him that a meaningful product is a unity of visual concepts , technologies and crafts .

In 1965 he returned to his alma mater (college). The experience he gained during design work in the glassworks was very useful for his didactics . In 1989 he received the title of professor and was initially head of the glass department and later vice dean, dean , prorector and rector of the Academy of Fine Arts. This not only gave him great satisfaction, but required great intellectual and physical commitment from him.

His academy was the only one in Poland to achieve economic profit and was able to afford its own buildings from its own resources. The sophisticated building of the academy is closely connected with the modern architecture of Wroclaw.
He currently lives in Polanica-Zdrój and runs his own designer studio. Among other things, he creates designer bottles for Polish alcoholic beverages.

creativity

He is considered a designer who was one of the first artists in Poland to break away from traditional patterns and pave the way for a new way of thinking in the field of glass art . His designs are based on a simple concept: economy of form, economical color, confident, objective lines. He is also mentioned in many statements as a reformer of Polish design and the first "race" designer in Poland .
In the descriptions of Horbowy's work, the pleasure of creating a compact form and simple, even rough forms are emphasized. Much attention is paid to the application of technological experiments, different colors and textures , in which different masses of glass are connected to each other.

He has more than 30 solo exhibitions and more than 80 group exhibitions in Wroclaw, Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, Hradec Králové and Pardubice, Kłodzko, Bremerhaven, Liége, Krakow, Poznań, Belgrade, Sofia, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Duisburg and Hanover, Stockholm, Moscow and Sofia, Rühimäki.

The works of Zbigniew Horbowy can be seen: in the Museum in Kłodzko among the exhibits in the permanent exhibition of glass art, the Gallery of Ceramics and Glass in Wroclaw, and in the Wroclaw Philharmonic Fronton , stained glass windows with a surface 180 m ² in the church of St. Hedwig in Częstochowa , and the spatial composition at Wytwórnia Filmów Fabularnych (film studio) in the four-domed pavilion (part of the exhibition building by Hans Poelzig near the Jahrhunderthalle ) in Wroclaw.

Horbowy has won numerous awards, including the highest cultural award in Poland, the Gloria Artis Medal for Cultural Merit in Silver and Gold, the City of Wroclaw Prize in 1978 and the Silver Medal of the Polish Promotion Foundation. In September 2019 he was awarded the Silesian Culture Prize of the State of Lower Saxony ( post mortem ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wybitny artysta uhonorowany Nagrodą Kulturalną Śląska , tuwroclaw.com, September 28, 2019
2. ↑ Kulturpreis Schlesien 2019. In: Schlesischer Kulturspiegel , No. 54, 2019, p. 23. Accessed on September 30, 2019 .  (pdf; 1.4 MB)