Leading Slovakian glass artist Zora Palová died on January 11, 2025, at the age of 77. Born in Bratislava when it was part of Czechoslovakia, Palová studied with Václav Cigler in the architectural glass program he led at the Academy of Fine Arts. There she would meet her husband, fellow student Štěpán Pala, with whom she had three sons.
Though she began her career focused on jewelry, Palová evolved to making large-scale glass sculpture, and doing so in a style very different from the smooth and minimalist geometric works of her professor Cigler.
"Glass is a very spiritual material," she said in a 2022 interview during an exhibition at the Glasgalerie Stölting in Hamburg, Germany, "it can absorb or reflect light. It is translucent or transparent. You can use it for expressions that you could never achieve with bronze or wood."
Palová's works often employ color, and though embracing the translucence of the material, the artist usually interrupted its smooth glassiness, preferring the energy of mottled, rippled, or altered surfaces that intensified the expressive power of her frequent references to nature.
Palová lived and traveled outside of Slovakia, including a seven-year stint at the University of Sunderland from 1996-2003, during which she was a visiting professor of research. For a period, she was named head of the glass department.
In 2008, she won an international competition to design an outdoor sculpture for the National Glass Centre, which cites the resulting 16-foot-tall work, Light Transformer, as the largest outdoor sculpture ever made.
In addition to exhibitions in the U.S. where she is represented by Habatat Galleries, Palová was shown in museums such as the Glasmuseet Ebeltoft in Denmark, the Bratislava City Gallery in Slovakia, and the Museum of Glass in Shanghai. In 2013, she had a major solo exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague entitled “Stories Told by Stones”.
Awarded the Rakow Commission by the Corning Museum of Glass in 2008, Palová was a generous educator, not only at Sunderland. In 2015-16, she held the International Randall Chair in Sculpture Dimensional Studies at Alfred University, where she worked across various materials, including neon and iron in addition to cast glass.
Up until her untimely death, the artist was working with curators at the Slovak National Gallery on the exhibition "In her element – glass by Zora Palová" which is scheduled to open in Bratislava on March 6, and will continue through May 2025.
She is survived by her husband and three sons, and a funeral was held in Bratislava shortly after her passing.