Bertil Vallien

"Swedish glass sculptor Bertil Vallien's most recent body of work, Somna Vakna (2000-) (Sleeping/Waking), is the current culmination of a 30-year career that has remarkably close ties to American art. Yet despite this, Vallien is not as widely known in the United States as he deserves to be. He has a background that includes eyewitness participation in the West Coast ceramics movement of the 1960s and 1970s yet his exhibitions have tended to be in art galleries that specialize in glass and do not always come to the attention of contemporary art enthusiasts. In this, the first study to be readily available in the U.S., noted art critic Matthew Kangas sets the art of Bertil Vallien in the context of both American art of the 1960s and postwar European existentialist/humanist cultural and artistic strains. He examines how the artist's cast-glass abstract and representational forms alternately epitomize and transcend their original cultural context of production - a Swedish glass factory, Kosta Boda, where Vallien has worked since 1969 - and extrapolate poetic and metaphorical references for an extremely simplified imagery that has impressively accumulated over the years into a broad and deep vocabulary. Lavishly illustrated and beautifully designed, this book is a must for contemporary glass collectors and others who follow Scandinavian art, figurative sculpture and new approaches to traditional materials and processes."--BOOK JACKET.