Page 68 - The Documenta issue of World of Art magazine (2002)

Livio Seguso

ARTIST PROFILE Heideggerian definition) and, ARTIST PROFILE
It would doubtless be easy
and simple to talk about Livio displaying uncommon courage,
Seguso’s fifty years’ activity and capable of not imposing limits
experience in the field of artistic on his aesthetic research and
glass in terms of a technical plastic investigations. An artist
perfection that few would be able able to acquire such a high level
to match. In all likelihood even of scientific knowledge that he
those few artists who preceded can lead it to test the limits and
him and who displayed equal discover possible solutions of
artistic dignity (and from whom co-existence between materials
Seguso drew inspiration, at least that would otherwise seem
dung his years of apprenticeship), to be antithetical. A man, an
with very few exceptions, would artist who, not only through
never have achieved as much, choice but above all genuine
would never have generated inclination, rose powerfully
such creative intensity and from the bloodless shallows of
innovation. None the less, this his original milieu, Murano, and
initial though fully deserved has inevitably become one of
consideration, would not be those rare, positively-configuring
sufficient (not yet, not ever) to characters - indeed, he has now
fully understand his work. Quite become the most characterizing
the contrary, it would be rather figure. An artist who quickly
reductive and superficial, if not assumed a double role: on the
lacking in deserved respect for one hand he broke with what
a continuous and unflagging had inevitably become a sterile
experimentation that has tradition and whose apparently
characterized the artistic work of irreversible downward trend
this Maestro for so long. unfortunately seems to have
been accepted as inevitable
It has been said that not by so many, and on the other
even his most accomplished hand a model to be followed, an
predecessors could, possibly, example to take inspiration from.
have attained his technical and
artistic heights - and for very 2
good reason. Livio Seguso, unlike
his predecessors, disinvested Method, rigor and discipline
himself from the very outset are the qualities that can clearly
of the overly limiting trappings be seen in Seguso’s work; but it
of a glass Maestro and quickly is his intuitive flashes, his endless
brought himself to the attention desire to experiment and provoke
of critics and public alike as a a continuous flow of emotions in
complete sculptor. A sculptor the observer that give his work
able to converse naturally with a sense of joyful uniqueness.
his materials because of his Indeed, whenever we see
fertile, communicative and one of his sculptures we are
comprehensible expressive constantly made to wonder how
qualities. He is one of the most an artist could possibly manage
refined, original and lyrical to transform the most daring of
sculptors of the late 20th executional sophistications into
century, and still now possesses such a simple final rendering,
an imaginative vitality and exuding nothing other than a
intellectual dynamism that sense of pure, essential beauty.
continue to amaze us — and he
will go on doing so for a long Certainly, at first sight, it
time to come. might seem appropriate to
concentrate on Seguso’s deft
An artist willing to take use of glass - this is a certain,
risks (to paraphrase a popular given, and obvious if not trivial,

66 WORLD of ART