Homage to Picasso: Perfectionism Kills Language, Pink with Blindfold
Artist
Eisch, Erwin
(German, 1927 - 2022)
Date1991
MediumMold-blown transparent pink glass, applied, mirrored, enameled; mounted on a painted wooden base
Dimensions21 1/2 × 14 × 9 in. (54.6 × 35.6 × 22.9 cm)
ClassificationsGlass
Credit LineGift of the Leah and Richard Waitzer Foundation
Object number2022.40
Label TextErwin Eisch
(German, 1927–2022)
Homage to Picasso: Perfectionism Kills Language, Pink with Blindfold
Mold-blown transparent pink glass, applied, mirrored, enameled; mounted on a painted wooden base, 1991
Gift of The Leah and Richard Waitzer Foundation. 2022.40
After training at the Art Academy in Munich, German painter and sculptor Erwin Eisch returned to his native Frauenau, a glassmaking center in the Bavarian Forest where his family owned a glass factory. Once there, he began experimenting with a radical new approach to glass: he was creating purely sculptural (non-functional) forms. In 1962, a chance encounter in Germany with American studio glass pioneer Harvey Littleton revealed an unexpected meeting of minds; their lifelong friendship would create lasting ties between German and American studio glass artists, glassmakers, and suppliers.
Eisch’s rich artistic oeuvre includes a series of life-sized, mold-blown heads representing Pablo Picasso, begun in the 1990s. The glass heads are all created from the same mold: sometimes modified hot, sometimes mirrored, and always painted with enamel. They are less portraits of Picasso than an underpinning for Eisch’s own convictions; here, he partially obscured Picasso’s head with a thick band of black glass indicating a gag and the message Perfectionism Kills Language painted across the bust. Eisch repeatedly expressed his conviction that the quest for perfection is contrary to the practice of art and that perfectionism is never reconcilable with life. He maintained that art lives in an uncertain space between contrasts and contradictions, requiring a life-affirming attitude and intellectual freedom to emerge and thrive.
Status
On view
Rochard, Antoine Edmond (French, b. 1836)
about 1868
J. E. Caldwell &Co.
