The centerpiece of Abstraction and Ourselves—a new exhibition at the Cafesjian Art Trust (CAT) Museum in Shoreview, Minnesota—is a wall of glass: two cloudy blue panes, linked by a clear cylinder, that somehow both threaten and uplift.
Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová created Blue Concretion for Czechoslovakia’s pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal, and it hadn’t been on display for three decades. The CAT, a four-year-old institution whose core is the glass collection of the late Twin Cities businessman Gerard Cafesjian, owns Blue Concretion. It’s just one piece in the country’s largest body of work by the storied husband-and-wife team.
Jill Ahlberg Yohe, the new curator of modern and contemporary art at the museum and the show’s lead organizer, was gobsmacked when she discovered the Libenský/Brychtová trove. “I’ve worked in art museums for decades; why had I not heard about them until now? They’re among the most important abstract artists of our time,” she says.
Abstraction and Ourselves, which runs through July 31, has other glass standouts in the abstract mode, including a trio of dark but luminous boxes by Libenský and Brychtová, two metal-and-glass works—one massive, one small and funky—by midcentury iconoclast Claire Falkenstein, and Petr Hora’s glowing blue half-ellipse Hercules (2004).
Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová, Blue Concretion, 1966, glass, metal, 97.5 x 80 x 36.25 in.
