Fine Art Gallery

Lucio Bubacco was born on the island of Murano (Venice), in April 1957. He began as a child with an old craftsman, playing with the glass and making asmall animals. In 1971, when he was 14, he completed his first works with the "lume" technique, inspired by Greek, Roman, and Byzantine classic art, by medieval and renaissance theatre and by "La Commedia dell'Arte".

Son of an artist, his father Severino Bubacco was a very important Maestro glass artist, famous for having invented along, with his brother Bruno, in the early fifties, a technique for working the glass for which they received the nickname "The Dew Brothers". He specialized in the technique "alla prima", a technique of crafting a form from a single molten sphere of glass, and this brought him to travel all around the world, especially in France. Lucio, while still an adolescent, from time to time joined his father abroad where he began to make his first performances.

In 1980 he began studying anatomical drawing with the Venetian artist Alessandro Rossi. His style takes on a new dimension: the movement of the figure becomes the central theme of his work. His masterpieces are crafted in Murano glass, also called "soft glass" because of its high soda content, which is famous for its characteristic brightness and ideal for the "lume" process.

His technical experience and knowledge of glass color compatibility allow him to create unique works: figures entirely hand-formed and incorporated in blown-vases or in casting. His works transcend traditional uses and conceptions of the "lume" technique. They collocate motive tensions and plasticity in a context of narrative surrealism, to create highly original pieces derived from his personal sensibility.

Lucio Bubacco's sensuous works combine the anatomic perfection of Greek sculpture with the Byzantine gothic architecture of his native Venice. Seductive themes, metamorphosis and transformation, forms emerging from the void, echo themes from our mythological past when sexuality was spiritual, not political. Bubacco began playing with glass as a boy, making small animals, beads, and the usual lampworker's tablet. At fifteen he received his artisan's license and began marketing flameworked Venetian memorabilia.

His fascination with anatomy, equine and human, lured him to push bit by bit beyond the perceived technical limits of his craft. His large free standing sculpture, worked hot and annealed during the process, is unique in lampworking made from flexible Murano soda glass canes, not less- breakable Pyrex. His pieces challenge our notion of lampwork as a primarily decorative and whimsical, stressing as they do form and plasticity, rather than detailed elaboration and/or narrative content presented as a mini-installation.

Bubacco's recent exploration with two dimensional inclusions in blown, solid off-hand and cast glass, burst forth into three dimensional glory, or are highlighted by cold working throught and around the images, as he persists in his quest to create a living force in glass.