György Gáspár is the most characteristic representative of the new generation of glass artists who entered the scene in the 2000s, giving artistic depth and a new impetus to the modernist tradition of glass art in Hungary. According to art historian Flóra Mészáros, his pioneering, experimental spirit "occupies a unique position in Hungarian contemporary art". Born in Pécs, Gáspár graduated from the Hungarian University of Applied Arts in 2003 with a degree from the Silicate Department and later absolved his doctoral degree (DLA) in sculpture at the University of Pécs. His early works explored the novel effects of furnace-cast glass sculpture (casting), relying on the use of astronomical metaphors. His polished sculptural objects, constructed by glueing together cast and optical glass elements, played with pop-cultural, cinematic references, from extraterrestrial entities to action-movie rockets. His work was characterised by precise technical execution, striking motifs reminiscent of Op-art and vivid contrasts that deployed UV colours. As a continuation of the early "geopop" era, he also investigated the possibilities of encapsulating uranium and the speed of light. His works from the second half of the 2010s harked back to the geometrical Avant-Garde tradition, Neoplasticism and the Bauhaus, analysing the structure and use of colour in the construction of images. His works are sculptural-artistic works that go beyond the traditional glass medium and are fuelled by the philosophy of deconstructionism. He has created fictitious pictorial spaces out of strict lines layered on laminated glass sheets. Besides Mondrianesque primary colours, he utilised various shades of orange, purple and turquoise. By scrapping coloured glass plates or drawing the line systems with isograph pens, he created panels and sculptures whose layers can be viewed from several directions thanks to the material's transparency. The geometric works are sometimes based on grids or the abstract patterns of industrial or architectural elements. Numerous prizes have attested to Gáspár's pioneering role, and in 2009, he was given the most prestigious national award in the field, the Noémi Ferenczy Award. He teaches the new generations of glass artists at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design and the University of Pécs. Due to his exhibitions, his work has become part of significant national and international collections, including the world's most important glass museum, the Corning Museum of Glass in New York. He lives and works in Budapest. Gábor Rieder