Zora Palova was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, in 1947, studied at the School of Applied Arts in Bratislava (1967) and taught at the Public School of Arts in Nitra (1969). She then resumed her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Bratislava, specialising in painting (1971) and later in glass and architecture (1975). She became President of the Association of Applied Arts and Designers in 1995 and Research Professor at the University of Sunderland in 1996, a post she holds today. Palova works almost entirely in glass, a material that she loves for its…
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Zora Palova was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, in 1947, studied at the School of Applied Arts in Bratislava (1967) and taught at the Public School of Arts in Nitra (1969). She then resumed her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Bratislava, specialising in painting (1971) and later in glass and architecture (1975). She became President of the Association of Applied Arts and Designers in 1995 and Research Professor at the University of Sunderland in 1996, a post she holds today.
Palova works almost entirely in glass, a material that she loves for its myriad qualities - its transparency, its reflectiveness, its opacity, its strength and fragility. She completely understands her medium and uses it with great simplicity and directness in sculptures that are abstract and compelling. Glass technology and its artistic application are well developed in Czechoslovakia, and Palova has contributed to its contemporary use. She has participated in a number of symposia on her subject in her home country since 1988 and has received awards including the WCC Prize, Interplays 92, Bratislava (1992) and the Triennial Prix, Glass Sculpture Triennial, Nuremberg (1993). Exhibiting widely throughout Europe, her sculpture is in many public and private collections around the world. She has also worked extensively to commission, and her glass pieces feature in prominent public spaces as far afield as Bratislava, Rotterdam and Sunderland.
Zora Palova writes of her chosen material:
Glass - access to immaterial spaces. Glass - imagination of the colour in matter. Glass - poetry of purity and touch.
