The Prometheus sculpture by the Greek artist Varotsos made of Pilkington Optifloat™ Clear - our clear float glass produced in the San Salvo factory, confirms the union between Pilkington Italia and art.
The majestic glass work, positioned in the courtyard of the Castromediano Museum in Lecce, represents the mythological figure through the purity and transparency of this material.
The fragments of glass, superimposed and pierced by light, make the materiality of the sculpture disappear, which, in the artist's intentions, serves to put man back at the centre of the great questions, to push all humanity toward a new evolution.
“Prometheus incorporates and restores light, myth, environment and history”.
These are the words of the artist concerning his special connection with glass:
“I often use glass in my sculptures, but it is always related to space. Space is redefined by the work and the material and, at the same tim,e defines the form and dimensions of the work itself. These are not numerical dimensions but dimensions that arise from the historical and cultural layers of the space in which I must intervene. Glass, in my art, arrived with The Poet of Cyprus in 1983 through an analytical process: The Poet is fragile, it is dangerous, it is explosive, it is energy, it is space, then the material ‘glass’ arrived as a container of space that, through time layering, recreates a new balance between space and time. In works like La Morgia, among the mountainous rocks of Gessopalena, in Abruzzo, I did not use or transfer large sheets of glass to an impervious and isolated territory. I interpreted the rocky material of that landscape, of that nature. The work stems from an inevitable correlation between the form developed by the layering of the transparent material and the environmental space. Sometimes the glass becomes a sea line, sometimes a piece of sky, or even a new horizon, depending on the space that contains it.”
Why is Prometheus made of glass?
“Glass is the material that gave me the most opportunity to represent the essence of the mythological figure of Prometheus. His had to be a merely perceived presence and glass, in its transparency, gave me this possibility. It is a pure material in its power, just as powerful as Prometheus' message in wanting to put mankind back at the centre of the great questions and to push mankind onto a new path of evolution. The fragments of glass generate this tension marked by time through the horizontal juxtaposition of cuts. The voluntary relationship with light is also fundamental; it is the light that makes the form explode in every direction, shattering the materiality of the work, emphasising its poetic and spiritual function. This spatial extension allows me to express the synthesis in a new movement in space. The aim is to move energy out of the work and Prometheus incorporates and returns light, myth, environment, and history. It presents itself as the synthesis of all man's experiences”.