Dana Zámečníková' (born 24 March 1945) is a Czech glass artist, painter, graphic artist, architect and teacher. She is one of the most important glass artists of the post-war generation that graduated in the 1960s.^[1]

Dana Zámečníková was born on 24 March 1945 in Prague. She comes from a family of an architect and inherited her love for painting from her grandfather, who was an amateur landscape painter. From childhood she was a lover of circuses and animals, animal tamers, fairground rides, magicians, and later theatre and cinema.^[2] After graduating from high school in Prague, she studied at the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University in 1962–1968.

After graduating from the Technical University in the summer of 1968, she went to West Germany and worked for a year at the Gottfried Böhm Architecture Department (Lehrstuhl für Werklehre, Die RWTH) in Aachen. After returning to Prague, she studied architecture and scenography at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (1969–1972) under professor Josef Svoboda and until 1971 she worked simultaneously in the "School" - architectural studio of Karel Hubáček of the Association of Engineers and Architects in Liberec (SIAL).

Since 1980 she has been working as a freelance artist,^[3] where she found the necessary freedom. The feminine approach, evident in her works, is emancipated, spontaneous to the point of instinctive and animalistic, but it has nothing to do with feminism.^[4]

She began working with glass in the 1970s, but her original approach soon brought her attention abroad and she enjoyed a steep career in the 1980s.^[5][6] Her works have been purchased by major international collections in the US, Europe, Japan and Australia, and in 1993 she was one of seven artists worldwide invited to create a monumental Theatrum mundi in a 10 × 10 × 10 m space for one of the atriums of the new glass museum building in Corning, New York.^{[7][8][9][10]}

She has worked as a guest lecturer at universities and glass schools abroad since the 1980s^[11] - Summer glass courses at Pilchuck School^[12] in Washington State, 1983, 1984, 1989, 1996, Philadelphia and Kent State University in Ohio, 1987, 1993, San Francisco State University, 1992, British Artists in Glass, Bag, England, 1986, Sydney, 1991, Mexico City, 1992, Japan: Miasa, 1988, Nlijima Glass Center, 1992, Toyama, 1998, Auckland, New Zealand, 1998, Tampa, Jacksonville University, USA, 1999, Glass art and Science, Lisbon, 1999.^[13][14] In 1985 she was appointed associate professor of Glass at the Pilchuck Summer School in the USA.^[15]

Dana Zámečníková is the wife of Marian Karel. She is a member of Umělecká beseda. Since 1997 she has been one of the donors whose works are auctioned in the annual auction for Konto Bariéry,^[16] (Charter 77 Foundation). She lives in Prague, in a house whose minimalist interior she designed herself. It includes a studio with its own furnace and a hall that serves as a summer workshop and a joint depository for both spouses.^[17]

Dana Zámečníková worked briefly as a set designer (Amphitryon, National Theatre, 1972–1973),^[15][21] designed painted furniture, children's toys, information signs, interiors and exhibition concepts. She is the author of a television cartoon for children.^[22] The essence of her thinking is working with space - first as a game inside the object, then inside and outside the object, and finally integrating the object into the space.^[23] As an architect, she is primarily interested in the space created by human activity and the objects that contribute to its character. It is not about the order and hierarchy of space oriented towards function, but rather the involvement of every detail that co-creates the atmosphere. Detail is not a peripheral element in her work, but one that changes the situation, character and meaning of the whole.^[24]

Until the mid-1980s, she made mostly small spatial paintings enclosed in boxes, with intricately coded scenes of model stories (Theatre, 1980, Mechanical Man, 1981, Two Cats, 1984,^[2] Levitation, 1985).^[25] She creates the illusion of spatial depth by drawing on several panes of glass in a succession. Her painting is characterized by simplicity to the point of being sign-like, offering an idea of the landscape rather than an image of it. With her humour, she introduces the principle of human spontaneity, exuberance and fantasy into a limited order.^[24] Her intimate works were at first poetic puns - a kind of personal kaleidoscope, created for the pleasure of the eye and soul^[23] (With a Cheetah, 1987, With a Bustle, 1987).

Later, she gradually enlarged the formats of her drawings, which were given socially critical meanings, letting them move freely from framing into space and often supplementing them with real objects,^[9] which leave it up to the observer to determine where reality begins and ends. The resulting image was first created by composing drawings on glass arranged in a row, but she gradually created more spatially complicated sculptures by joining the glass at different angles and by drawing the surrounding space into play through diagonal deployment.^[26][10] The artist uses computer scans to process photographs, paintings, prints or reproductions of works to create illusory to surreal assemblages. Her works often depict existential situations (The Scream, 1990) and mix memories with visual fantasy.^[23]

Dana Zámečníková's dominant artistic technique is cut flat and laid glass or plexiglass,^[27] cold decorated with painting,^[28] enamels, silkscreen, sandblasting or etching,^[29][30] which she combines in multi-layered spatial plans and installations. Thanks to her studies in stage design, she has brought narrative elements of "wild painting" to glass, with roots in the legacy of Pop art.^[31] The uniquenes of her work among glass artists is based on imaginative figuration.^[32] Some of the things Dana Zámečníková evokes in her work are reminiscent of circuses, fairy tales, theatre, diaries, infinity, magic,^[33] or, as in Venice, of overseas voyages, glitz, misery, the swarming of human beings, luxury and poverty. Her drawings depict colourful, defiant courtesans in high boots, Jews with yellow caps, woven pillows, strange tassels and, proverbially, the smell of canals.^[4] Zámečníková is interested in the meaning and spatial context of the stories she depicts or re-creates (White Bride, Black Madonna, 1998).^[34] Her installations consist of glass panes of unequal shape, size and inclination arranged in space, on which colourful drawings and paintings are recorded as fragments of experiences, ideas and impressions.^[35] In addition to expressive painting, her works are influenced by the rhythm of movements, interpenetration, overlapping, mirroring and the appearance and disappearance of details when changing the point of view.^[14] In her spatial installations, she uses the optical properties of glass and the reflection of the surrounding space, which mix with the painted image and contribute to the final effect.^[36]

• Divided World, Victoria & Albert Museum, London 1990
• Conversation with a Dog, 1992
• Without Saying a Word, Prague Castle 1995
• My Family, 1997
• Woman Man, Borgholm, 2005
• Black Madonna, Borgholm 2005
• From Family Album, Museum Kampa, Prague 2005
• Wedding, 2004
• Bear Still Life, Prague Airport, 2008
• Dream, Florence, 2008
• Storm, Kuzebauch Gallery, Prague (1) 2011
• My Family, DSC Gallery, Prague, 2015
• Isabelle, Svatoš Gallery, Kostelec nad Černými lesy 2021
• Installation, Museum of Glass and Jewellery in Jablonec nad Nisuo, 2022
• Installation, Museum of Glass and Jewellery in Jablonec nad Nisou, 2022