Michael Pavlik

Michael Pavlik was born in Prague, Czechoslavia in 1941. He earned his Bachelor of Arts at the School of Glass Art in Zelezny Brod, Czechoslovakia in 1973 and went to the College of Applied Arts in Prague where he received his master’s degree. Pavlik began working with glass in 1972 where he forged a remarkable international career as one of the world’s leading glass artists, earning early recognition for his glass design, including blown, cut and molded glass sculpture. After coming to the United States, he studied at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina and taught at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York. In 1984, he was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Pavlik no longer blows glass, but instead constructs geometric forms from cast glass.

Pavlik created his individual glass sculptures primarily between 1982 and 1998. During that time, he focused on two different types of work, one made from encasing layers of molten glass, and the other by techniques of casting and gluing glass pieces together. Pavlik incorporated the complexity of spatial relationships into many of his designs. Pavlik and his wife, Vladimira Klumpar, were also instrumental in aiding fellow artist, Pavel Novak, to emigrate to the United States from Czechoslovakia. Lending Novak his house and possessions in the time it took for him to get settled in his new country. In 1999, Pavlik and Klumpar began casting sculpture together. They moved back to Czechoslovakia in 2001 to oversee the casting of their work. Michael Pavlik retired in 2003.

His works are held in both public and private collections across the world, where he is noted for his unique style and tactility with glass. He has contributed a stunning array of glass creations which are exhibited at over 30 museums worldwide and can be found in the following collections: Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Japan; Museum fur und Gewerbe, Germany; Corning Museum of Glass, New York; Carnegie-Mellon Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; Whittney Collection, New York; High Museum, Georgia; Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York; Museum of Decorative Arts, Switzerland; Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, among others.