Born in Prague in 1922, the world-renown glass artist René Roubícek died in his native city on Sunday, April 29, 2018, after a brief illness. Despite his age and until his last moments, Roubícek was actively engaged in artistic pursuits and full of contagious energy. He is recognized as an artist who, from the 1940s, contributed greatly to enhancing the perception and use of glass as a full-fledged sculptural material.

He was also one of the founding fathers of the European Studio Glass movement – an internationally acclaimed phenomenon co-pioneered by Czech artists who worked with the material to realize sculptural expression decades before the United States movement began. In a highly original manner, Roubíce...