Lino Tagliapietra

Lino Tagliapietra (born 1934) is an Italian glass artist originally from Venice, who has also worked extensively in the United States. As a teacher and mentor, he has played a key role in the international exchange of glassblowing processes and techniques between the principal American centers and his native Murano, "but his influence is also apparent in China, Japan, and Australia—and filters far beyond any political or geographic boundaries."

Training Tagliapietra was born August 10, 1934, in an apartment on the Rio dei Vetri (which translates litteraly in "glass canal", or more broadly in "glass street" considering the intense use of waterways in the Venetian Lagoon as means for transport of goods and people) in Murano, Italy, an island with a history of glass-making that dates from 1291. It provided an ideal educational environment for Tagliapietra to develop his techniques and glass artistry. On June 16, 1946, at the age of 12, he was apprenticed to the glass maestro Archimede Seguso. He began in the Galliano Ferro factory as a water carrier and after two years was allowed to participate in glass manufacturing for the first time, applying ribbing to a single piece. On 13 September 1959 he married Lina Ongaro, whose family had been involved in Venetian glass production for centuries. and EOS Design nel Vetro. His influence on the American art glass studio movement is primarily attributed to his colleague Dale Chihuly. In 1968 Chihuly visited Murano, where he gave Tagliapietra studio time to develop his own pieces. He taught Tagliapietra his techniques, which Tagliapietra taught to other glass maestri, including Pino Signoretto, and Tagliapietra taught Chihuly the Venetians' secrets in turn.

Tagliapietra taught workshops at La Scuola Internazionale del Vetro (Murano) in 1976, 1978, and 1981, where artists and blowers worked on an equal footing.

According to Rosa Barovier Mentasti, a leading historian of glass:

In Giovanni Sarpelon's view, Tagliapietra has "a close and almost symbiotic rapport with glass" that erases the distinction between the craftsman and the artist. There is no question in his work "whether the fact that a work is made of glass is purely incidental or whether it is essential to its creation."

In 1998, he undertook a challenging project with Steuben Glass Works that required him to work without color usingthe unfamiliar batch glass that Steuben has developed for its own production.

In 2008, Art Guide Northwest reported:

He spent a week in October 2012 at the MIT Glass Lab, working with glass artists and educators to explore computer modeling and folding techniques. He has been working with MIT staff for several years to develop software for computer-aided design, known as Virtual Glass, attempting to improve advance planning to reduce costs, since both the materials and facilities rentals that glassblowing requires are expensive.

In November 2011, he inaugurated the glass studio at the Chrysler Museum of Art with a public demonstration in advance of its formal opening. He created "an impossibly large and complicated piece, which took a team of glassblowers more than an hour." In the spring of 2012, he participated in glassblowing demonstrations to mark the tenth anniversary of the founding of The Glass Furnace, an international non-profit glass school in Istanbul.

In June 2012, the Columbus Museum of Art announced it had acquired a glass installation piece by Tagliapietra, Endeavor, an "armada of thirty-five boats suspended from the ceiling" that instantly became "an iconic part of the Museum's collection."

Tagliapietra serves on the board of directors of UrbanGlass, a resource center for glass artists in Brooklyn, NY.

From October 29, 2016 – July 16, 2017, the Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibited Lino Tagliapietra Painting in Glass which highlighted five works from his panel series.

Awards 2013: Visionary Award, Art Palm Beach 1998: The Libensky Award, Chateau Ste Michelle Vineyard and Winery and Pilchuck Glass School 1997: Bavarian State Gold Medal for Crafts (Urkunde Goldmedaille), Germany