Schwarzer-Litwornia Krystyna

Krystyna Schwarzer-Litwornia (Polish, born 1952 in Gdynia) has graduated from the Faculty of Ceramics and Glass at the Fine Arts Academy in Wrocław. During her studies she visited Sweden and worked for some time in the glass laboratory in Linköping in 1977. Her diploma majored under Prof. Henryk Wilkowski was displayed among other best diploma works at Zachęta Gallery in 1980.

Although she has been living and working in Italy since 1982, she is constantly present in the Polish art scene. In 1983 the prestigious New Glass Review, published by the Corning Museum of Glass (New York) published her work among the top 100 designs of the year. In 1988-1989 she received the Italian Government scholarship to study glass, spending much time in Venice (her works are executed mostly by the renowned Murano glassworks). In 1999 her works were exhibited in the Zachęta Gallery again, during a group exhibition "Figure in Polish Sculpture of the19th and 20th Century" by Piotr Szubert, previously presented in the sculpture museum in Orońsko. Recently her interests focus primarily on sculpture. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is included in many public and private collections.

Forms designed by Krystyna Schwarzer-Litwornia are usually very simple: even when she imbues her work with a certain complex decorative quality, the artist deprives glass of its basic and most precious property, i.e. its transparency. She tries to make the most of the possibilities resulting from the transparency of glass by enclosing inside it masses of air bubbles or compositions created with threads of colour; by discovering illusions in the play of the foreground and background, or in the forms enclosed inside the glass' inner space; by modelling the luminosity and depth of colour; by working with the thickness of an object; by cutting it; by working the surface in order to make it more lustrous or dull. This approach is characteristic of both her functional glass forms and sculptures, as she is also a sculptor and currently her interest remains focussed on sculpture in glass.

prof. Lidia Reghini di Pontremoli [in:] Krystyna Schwarzer-Litwornia, Szkło – Glass – Vetro, Wrocław, 1997, finearts.pl