Omaggio Picasso Murano

Walter Furlan was born in 1931 in Chioggia, a small town near Venice. He started to work in a furnace called VAMSA very early. He apprenticed from one of the most famous glass masters on the island, Romano Tosi, better known as Mamaracio. Towards the end of the second world war, from 1940–45, he worked in the furnace Gino Cenedese, where he met Alfredo Barbini along with the old masters from Vamsa. During this period, Furlan learned the particular technique called a massello, that is, he learned how to shape a quantity of glass that was not blown and therefore quite difficult to handle. In 1963, he exhibited his works of art in the official Glass Display on Murano Island sponsored by the Venetian Institute for work and later on in the Arts and Crafts Exhibition in Reggio, Calabria. At the beginning of the 70s, Furlan cooperated with Maestro Angelo Seguso and designer Mario Pisoni in the glass factory Seguso Art Glass. The works of Furlan are to be found in museum collections all over the world.

The first decades of the 20th century were a period of artistic upheaval, with modern art movements including Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism and Dadaism questioning centuries of traditional views of what art should be. Using abstraction, experimental forms and interdisciplinary techniques, painters, sculptors, photographers, printmakers and performance artists all pushed the boundaries of creative expression.

Major exhibitions, like the 1913 Armory Show in New York City — also known as the “International Exhibition of Modern Art,” in which works like the radically angular Nude Descending a Staircase by Marcel Duchamp caused a sensation — challenged the perspective of viewers and critics and heralded the arrival of modern art in the United States. But the movement’s revolutionary spirit took shape in the 19th century.

The Industrial Revolution, which ushered in new technology and cultural conditions across the world, transformed art from something mostly commissioned by the wealthy or the church to work that responded to personal experiences. The Impressionist style emerged in 1860s France with artists like Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and Edgar Degas quickly painting works that captured moments of light and urban life. Around the same time in England, the Pre-Raphaelites, like Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, borrowed from late medieval and early Renaissance art to imbue their art with symbolism and modern ideas of beauty.

Emerging from this disruption of the artistic status quo, modern art went further in rejecting conventions and embracing innovation. The bold legacy of leading modern artists Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian and many others continues to inform visual culture today.

Find a collection of modern paintings, sculptures, prints and other fine art on 1stDibs.