ART AND BROKEN GLASS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 55, Issue 3941, 18 August 1937, Page 5

ART AND BROKEN GLASS

A NEW MOSAIC. Three years ago, Greek artist Jean Vai da, starving and down-and-out, picked up a piece of broken glass, and bared a wrist artery. To-day that same piece of glass forms the centre of a beautiful new form of mosaic work hung on the walls of a fashionable Mayfair home. For, just in time, Jean Varda realised the possibilities of old glass. Instead of using it to finish his life he made it a beginning. Inspired and excited, he hunted out all the old glass in his little flat. He visited the Caledonian Market and exchanged his few possessions for cracked mirrors and window panes. He asked his friends for pieces of glass they did not want. Then, shutting himself up in his studio, he began to work out his idea. Slowly an intricate design was formed from the broken pieces of glass, set in a cement cast, and coloured. The result was something new in Ihe art world. The picture was hailed as the work of a genius. Orders for more and more came pouring in. An exhibition was arranged. The original glass mosaic was sold to a well-known London hostess. Friends saw it hanging on her dining room wall and gave further commissions. Jean Varda became the latest-thing. A tonic. A breath of fresh air in a world grown a little weary of even the most sur-realistic of pictures. And now Jean Vardo need no longer work with bits of unwanted glass—unless he is so inclined. At last he can execute his pictures in whatever medium he chooses.