Kiki Kogelnik is regarded as one of Austria’s leading artists of her time. She was born in Bleiburg in 1935 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna from 1954 to 1958. From 1961 onwards, she lived and worked in New York, influenced by several decades of contemporary art. From 1990, she divided her time between New York, Vienna and Bleiburg.

After exhibiting ceramics at Bologna Art Fair in 1994, Kogelnik’s gallerist, Judith Walker, asked whether she would consider creating some heads in glass. Initially, Kogelnik was somewhat sceptical, as glass was an entirely new material for her.
However, her attitude changed completely when she visited Adiano Berengo’s glassworks on Murano in Venice: “I was immediately intrigued by the great variety of working techniques and the potential glass offered.”

In May 1994, Kogelnik created 14 different heads based on various sketches. The works were first exhibited in Düsseldorf and Amsterdam. Several exhibitions followed, presenting a series of so-called Venetian Heads at Europa Design Depot in Klagenfurt, the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, Galerie Bei der Albertina in Vienna and subsequently at Galerie Judith Walker in Klagenfurt in 1995.

In 1996, Kiki Kogelnik’s glass works were exhibited in the United States for the first time, when 16 new sculptures were shown at the Athenaeum in Chicago.

When Kiki Kogelnik worked together with the master glassblower, Adriano Berengo was always at her side. As Kogelnik described it, he was there not only to translate her ideas into Italian, but also to convince the master that he could achieve something entirely new using traditional techniques. The process was far from simple. Kogelnik said that without Adriano, her heads would not have been as successful. The Venetian heads are the result of this successful collaboration.

In 1994, Kogelnik described her work on the glass heads in Murano together with the master glassblower: “...I began to understand what glass really is. It is as if were dipping our ladles into the water of Venice in order to pour it into heads - and the water turned solid and became glass. Transparent—solidified in its flow—it became a manifestation of the transformation of an element. I was surprised by this metamorphosis: the hot became cold, the liquid became hard. That's why I call this series ‘Venetian Heads’—it is not only the place of their creation - it is also their nature.”