ANNA VENINI PORTRAITS, 2008

 

She said…..  

“I met Richard Meitner when he came to work for us at EOS, the small factory we had opened after selling Venini, a sad period as my husband had recently died. I fell in love with his work immediately. Those animals, those bottles and lamps, were creatures from a special world, not simply a child’s world of fantasy but informed by serious scientific ideas. What he designed was philosophical, research into a world where glass was important, but not essential. Richard reminds me of an Alchemist, and I can perhaps imagine him doing his work in a dark and mysterious room, perhaps full of haze, replete of course with an oven to blow glass, but also filled to the brink with many and varied materials of very different natures. I remember some pieces he made using the typical Delft Blue decoration of Holland, gold lustres, and a number of other surface decorations which were the product of much thought and research he had done himself. I can no longer even describe them. I am particularly fond of his animals, especially those strange rabbits which periodically appear and disappear in his work. They are certainly, with their strange expressions, creatures from another world, a “Richard world”. I am the proud owner of a piece by Richard, one that gives me a great deal of pleasure to look at. A long blown tube, it resembles a thermometer, but the temperature gauges are fantastic images. A magnifying glass attached to the piece urges one to pay attention, but just what is it that we are measuring? The best way to express what I like most about Richard and his work is perhaps this: he lives in an extraordinary world, one that is not simply the pleasing world of fairy tales but is at the same time a breeding ground for some serious (albeit elusive) philosophical thought and research. It is from this place that he creates. It is my feeling that he has not only already accomplished great things, but has, in addition, a long career in front of him as an important artist. I come from a family of glass makers. I love Richard’s work most certainly not only for that reason, but also because Richard is able to approach that material and to use it with culture, with great fantasy and originality, with authority and great thoughtfulness. That combination is, in my experience, highly unusual.” 

 

Anna Venini     Venice   2001