Katarína Bajcurová, Sylva Petrová

Palo Macho (born 1965, Strezenice, Slovakia) is, indeed, one of the most original contemporary Slovak glass artists, known mostly for his innovative approach to glass. The uniqueness of his position lies in the fact that he has been working with painting on and in glass for a long time, and has achieved remarkable results and recognition at home as well as abroad. He is both a painter and a glassmaker moving at the border of two disciplines – painting, a free art discipline, and glassmaking.
 
Macho prefers working with panel glass, shaping and forming it hot, allowing him to create two-sided relief-paintings, object-paintings. The fact that when melting the glass pane, he combines several layers of paint complemented by an uncomplicated line motif on both the underside and the surface, gives his object-paintings relief and depth, creating the illusion of inner space as well as of a plot. Despite the fact that, for Palo Macho, working with glass is a highly intellectual activity standing on mental deliberation, which in turn stands on mastered technological skills, and although he does not rely on the purposeless beauty or mystique of glass, the resulting works carry a strong emotional drive and an association potential that cause to meditate and think.
 
The new monumental monograph on Palo Macho presents Macho’s creation in both word and image in an utterly refreshing style by graphic designer Peter Nosál.
 
Art historians Katarina Bajcurová and Sylva Petrová show us around Macho’s work, expounding the principles that rule his line of thought and artistry in glass, and its place in a broader international context as well as within the latest glass art trends. The book not only renders a comprehensive overview of Macho's work from the late 1990s, when he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, up to the present (Cycles: Monotype, Of Figure, Of the Land, Geometry, Good Vessels, Circles, Shirts, and Solitude - Architecture), but it also includes information on the author's career development as well as pictures from his major shows.