#TheArtofFire, the seventh edition of The Venice Glass Week, begins on 9th September with over 250 events dedicated to the art of glass. Founded in 2017, the international festival aims to celebrate, support and promote the art of glassmaking. The city-wide festival will feature more than 250 events organised by over 200 participants across 140 venues, all evaluated and selected by the festival’s Curatorial Committee, chaired by glass historian Rosa Barovier Mentasti.
Vetro boemo: i grandi maestri, The Venice Glass Week, 2023. Photo © Enrico Fiorese
Among the most important highlights of #TheArtofFire will be the hotly anticipated return of The Floating Furnace, first seen in 2020. Over the course of four evenings, from 9th – 12th September, 6-8pm, a barge decked out with an active glass furnace will be moored on the Grand Canal by Campo dell’Erbaria near the Rialto Bridge, hosting a series of free glassmaking demonstrations by some of Murano’s finest glass masters, together with glass students from Scuola Abate Zanetti.
Laura de Santillana, 7 Elements, 2015
Once again this year, one of the main centres of the festival will be The Venice Glass Week HUB and The Venice Glass Week HUB Under35, both hosted at Palazzo Loredan, home of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Campo Santo Stefano. The Venice Glass Week HUB, situated in the magnificent rooms on the first floor, will feature a series of installations by 20 Italian and international glass artists aged 36 and over.
Lino Tagliapietra, L’origine del viaggio. Photo © Roberta Orio
The artists who will exhibit in the HUB are: Balázs Sipos, Dóra Varga, Felekşan Onar, György Gáspár, Helen Maurer, Hugh Findletar, Ivan Baj, Lætitia Jacquetton, László Lukácsi, Leslie Ann Genninger, Mauro Puccitelli, Michela Cattai, Michele Burato, Myriam Thomas, Péter Borkovics, Peter Wiechenthaler, Svetlana Evdokimova, Thomas Blank, Tristan di Robilant and Zsuzsanna Kóródi.
Micheluzzi Glass, Ghiaccio. Photo © Bianca Vannucchi
The Venice Glass Week HUB Under35, featuring installations by 24 artists aged 18-35 from Italy and abroad, will be hosted in the ground floor galleries of the palace. The Venice Glass Week HUB Under35 is organised as part of the Regione del Veneto’s 2023 programme of interventions for economic promotion and internationalization, in collaboration with Camera di Commercio Venezia Rovigo, Sistema Camerale Veneto and Venicepromex.
Michela Cattai, Botanica Adriatica, 2023
The artists who will take part in the Under35 HUB are: Aldo Boscolo & Marta Rossetto, Andra Jõgis, Ariel Aravot, Boldizsár Lukácsi, Caroline LaCava, Dasha Bolkhovitina, Dimitri Sarazin, Disha Trivedi, Iuliia Rokina & Vera Golubeva, Kristina Baroeva, Daria Bolkhovitina, Sergei Martynov, Konstantin Gvozdev, Anastasia Vishnyakova, Ludivine Loursel, Maarja Mäemets, Rezzan Hasoglu, Sigrid Luitsalu, Tomas Kucera & Johan Pertl, Viviane Anorde Stroede and Zihao Xiong.
