Magazzino extends run of glass masterpieces

By popular demand, Magazzino Italian Art in Philipstown is extending its exhibit, Yoichi Ohira: Japan in Murano, through Feb. 22.

"One woman kept begging me, 'Please don't close it,' and hugged me when I told her we're holding it over," says museum co-founder Giorgio Spanu.

Selecting favorites from the 54 unique pieces is challenging. There are advanced coloring and techniques, deceptive textures, complex swirling patterns and optical illusions aplenty.

Ohira, who died in 2022, became enamored with glass as a youngster, calling it "music without sound." He studied in Japan, then pursued further education in Venice, graduating in 1978 and landing on the nearby island of Murano, a famous glassblowing center for centuries.

After being hired by the de Majo company as artistic director in 1987, he left after five years to forge his own path. Unlike many designers at the time, Ohira credited the craftsmen who helped execute his vision, including carver Giacomo Barbini and glass artists Livio Serena and Andrea Zilio.

In 1997, Spanu and Nancy Olnick, the museum's other founder, attended Ohira's first solo exhibition at Caffe Florian in Venice. Over the years, the couple has amassed and displayed many of his works.

Around 85 percent of the exhibit is culled from their collection, which spans most of the artist's nearly four-decade career in Italy, starting with his early reinventions of historic Venetian-style vessels. The exhibit ends with three works of thick, nearly colorless glass created by melding together two separate vessels.

At the exhibit, which fuses Japanese-inspired motifs and sensibilities with meticulous Italian craftsmanship, many visitors point out details, utter a comment and shake their heads.

The patterns on some vases resemble Japanese letters, including one with clay-like vertical streaks on a black background. "Dark colors are incredibly difficult to render in glass," says Spanu.

The texture of "Pasta Vitria" looks bumpy, but closer inspection reveals a mirror-smooth surface. Black lines streaking the surface of "Natsume" are obvious, but the rest of the orb settles on green or purple, depending on one's viewpoint.

Mille luci, 2004

Mosaico, 1997

Murrine, 1997

Pasta vitrea 2, 1997

Pasta vitrea 3, 1997

Pasta Vitrea Finestre, 1997

Pasta vitrea, 1997

Pastra vitrea, 1997

Polvere 2, 1997

Polvere, 1997

Polvere, 2000

Serena e Giacomo Barbini, Mille luci, 2002

Silenzio, 1999, glass

Tessere smaltate, 2000

Finestre 2, 1997

Finestre, 1998

Fiori verdi e blu, 1998

Gocce di cristallo, 1999

Gocce di murrine, 1999

Grappolo in rosso e in nero, 2001

A canne bianche e verdi

In the artist's little windows series, tiny shards of shiny glass speckle the works, some of which look like wood or pottery. Ohira hand-carried the milk-white glass sculpture "Finestre" on an airplane, gifting it to Spanu and Olnick when they curated a show at Manhattan's Museum of Art and Design in 2000.

Another pattern resembles small strings of seashells fused together with remarkable precision. The carver Barbini transformed the top of one work into a lagoon; others include vertical surface scratches, although he typically worked with a wheel.

The exhibition displays a few of Ohira's hand-drawn designs, the raw material his team turned into glass masterpieces. Like potters, who never know what their conception is going to look like once the kiln door swings open, glassblowers bear the similar vicissitudes of trial and error.

"No one knows how he and his collaborators mastered the interplay between opacity and transparency," says Olnick. "To this day, it's completely mysterious and unbelievable."

Magazzino Italian Art, at 2700 Route 9 in Philipstown, is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday to Monday. Tickets are $20 ($10 students, seniors, visitors with disabilities; $5 ages 5 to 10; military, veterans, children under 5, members and Philipstown residents free). See magazzino.art.