Exhibited at Ceramic Art Pavilion
Authors: Luisa Figini (Switzerland), Suess Franz (Austria), Renate Hahn (Germany), Makoto Hatori (Japan), Seung-Ho Yang (Switzerland / South Korea), Yih-Wen Kuo (USA), Elizabeth Le Retif (France), Mercedes Sebastian (Spain), Aldona Šaltenienė (Lithuania), Martin Willems (the Netherlands), Aleksandr Zadorin (Russia).
The roots of Panevėžys International Ceramic Symposiums reach the eighties of the 20th century. Ceramic seminars for local artists started at the Panevėžys Glass Factory in 1983. In 1989 foreign artists were invited for the first time and the event was labeled a symposium. In 1990 the Panevėžys Civic Art Gallery undertook responsibility for the planning and organization of the symposiums in co-operation with the Glass factory (later “Panevėžio Stiklas”), and from 2006 with the ceramics company “Midenė”. The sym-posiums have become an annual international event whose reputation keeps on growing.
Panevėžys International Ceramic Symposiums have hosted 170 artists from 37 countries: Australia, Austria, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Finland, France, Hungary, India, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, South Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the USA.
The Panevėžys Civic Art Gallery houses more than 650 pieces of chamotte (stoneware) ceramics, which were created during the annual ceramic symposiums. This unique and only collection of its kind in Baltic States reflects not only local and transient trends in contemporary ceramics, but also a ceramic commonality through ideas, visual peculiarities, features, and developments of form.
Panevėžys International Ceramic Symposiums collection was presented in Lithuania as well as in foreign: Latvia, Austria, Poland, the Netherlands, and USA. The pieces of ceramic collection now are displayed in the Presidential Courtyard in Vilnius.