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Berengo Studio is a glass studio transforming the art of glass andglass art through collaborations with contemporary artists based inMurano,Venice, Italy. It was established in 1989 by Adriano Berengo, a Venetian entrepreneur whose goal was to renovate the tradition ofMurano glass by crossbreeding it with the global culture ofcontemporary art.[1]
Berengo took inspiration from the work of Egidio Costantini and hisFucina degli Angeli, where in the 1960s artists such asPicasso,Chagall andLucio Fontana came to work with glass.[2] He began by inviting contemporary artists to work on the island and collaborate with the glass maestros to create sculptures in glass, one of his first major collaborations was with the Austrian painterKiki Kogelnik. “I think what [Adriano Berengo] did is exceptionally brilliant. The idea, the concept is so strong,” Ai Weiwei once noted in an interview withTL Mag. “He believes in contemporary expression, but at the same time tries to develop this old technique into a new language … I’m a contemporary artist, but I am always learning and working with tradition.”[3]
In 2009, in order to extend to reach and the significance of his project, Adriano Berengo initiated a new gallery, Venice Projects, to promote an evolution in the relationship between art and glass. Therefore, he organized a collateral exhibition of the Venice Biennale 2009 aimed at reporting the use of glass in contemporary art. The exhibition, calledGlasstress, included historical pieces byMan Ray,Lucio Fontana,Robert Rauschenberg,Richard Hamilton,Giuseppe Penone andJoseph Kosuth, and more recent glass artworks by, among others,Tony Cragg,Lawrence Carroll,Chen Zhen andJannis Kounellis.[4] The experiment was so successful that Glasstress had a new edition at the 2011 Biennale,[5] with several works specially commissioned for the event by outstanding artists, designers and architects (Barbara Bloom,Jan Fabre,Vik Muniz,Tony Oursler, Javier Pérez,Thomas Schütte,Kiki Smith,Yutaka Sone, Mike + Doug Starn,Patricia Urquiola,Zaha Hadid,Fred Wilson and many others).
Glasstress went on become an international exhibition, travelling the world to locations such as Stockholm, Beirut, Riga, and New York. Most recently in 2021 editions of Glasstress opened at theBoca Raton Museum of Art and later atThe State Hermitage Museum in Russia.
In 2021 as a collateral event of theVenice Biennale of Architecture the Studio collaborated with the Italian companyWonderGlass to present the design exhibitionGlass to Glass.[6] The exhibition provided the Studio with the opportunity to collaborate with designers such asMaarten Baas, and Sam Baron for the first time.