Eisch, Erwin
Erwin Eisch, born in Frauenau in the Bavarian forest in South-Eastern Germany, is the eldest of six children of glass engraver Valentin Eisch and his wife, Therese Hirtreiter. His father was employed as a master engraver at the glass factory of Isidor Gistl, a trade he passed on to his son Erwin. From 1946 to 1948 Eisch worked in the family’s cutting and engraving shop while studying at the School of Glassmaking in nearby Zwiesel, Germany (Zwiesel Glasfachschule). After taking his journeyman’s examination in engraving in 1949, Eisch entered the Munich Academy of Fine Arts (Academie der Bildenden Künste). There he studied glass design, sculpture and interior architecture, returning to Frauenau in 1952 to assist his parents and two brothers, Alfons and Erich, in founding a glassworks there. Within a few years the Eisch Glass Factory (Glashütte Eisch) employed a staff of some 200 people. Eisch returned to the Munich Academy of Fine Arts in 1956, where he continued his studies in sculpture and painting gravitating toward social criticism and anti-art establishment actions. In 1962, he married artist Gretel Stadler and Eisch worked as the designer for the Eisch Glass Factory’s commercial line of glassware. He also built a small studio furnace in the basement of the factory where he melted his own batch from 1965 to 1975. Working in a studio environment, rather than on the factory floor, allowed him to develop and refine his personal vision for glass as a sculptural medium. In 1988 Eisch founded the summer school Bild-Werk Fauenau in Frauenau, Germany. Eisch’s work has been collected by the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin, Germany; Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg, Veste Coburg, Germany; Corning Museum of Glass, Kunstmuseum der Stadt, Düsseldorf, Germany; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; Museum Bellerive, Zürich, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Nagahama City Museum, Japan; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Toledo Museum of Art, and the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
