Glass application 1972-1974

Location: W-Hoog

"Apart from my study at the Academy of Architecture in Tilburg I have always kept drawing, which was my great love. I also studied architecture because this discipline has affinity with drawing. In practice, however, you have little freedom and the technical side of building does not appeal to me, whereas I can actually express myself in visual art".

This is how Jan van Goethem (1930) motivates his choice to be an artist, in the early 1960s. He makes paintings, gouaches and glass sculptures and the glass application at the TU/e from 1974 is the first one in a long series. His source of inspiration for this is twofold. On the one hand, there is the glass roof of the railway station St. Lazare in Paris. On the other hand, there is in particular the application by the painter Matisse in the chapel of St. Paul de Vence.

Initially Van Goethem designs a colorful flying carpet for the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Later he comes back to this. As aircraft engineering is taught as well within Mechanical Engineering, he decides to incorporate folded toy airplanes into the glass sculpture. His study stands him in good stead in the realization, especially when big and spatial works are concerned. He designs glass applications inter alia for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for the Dapperbuurt in Amsterdam (into which he also incorporates light) and a glass wall construction at Utrecht University.

For Van Goethem, visual art and architecture are about design and construction, about making limits and establishing interconnections. This is why Van Goethem always works with geometric shapes, also in his graphic work. The design for the TU/e was not only a personal breakthrough, for that matter, but it also stimulated other (glass) artists. Glass art is a form of art that had fallen into disuse in the Netherlands, until Van Goethem took it up again.

See also: Vubis database