Klaus Moje

Klaus Moje AO is the founding father of the contemporary Australian Glass movement. His life-long affair with the material began in the early 1950s as a glass cutter and grinder at the Moje family workshop in Hamburg, Germany. During the 1960s and 1970s he explored the expressive potential of glass and began exhibiting internationally. In 1982 Moje emigrated to Australia to become the founding Head of the Glass Workshop at the ANU Canberra School of Art. He has been the recipient of many significant awards in Australia, Europe and the United States including a his nomination for the “Living Treasure: Master of Australian Craft” by Object, Australian Centre for Craft & Design. He received this award late in 2006, the second such annual award celebrating the achievements of the most influential and iconic figures within the Australian craft movement. Klaus Moje’s work is held in more than 70 public collections in Australia and overseas.

Klaus Moje is best known for his dramatically coloured vessels and wall panels with laminated colour fields of intense geometric and abstract patterns. After five decades he continues to push the technical and expressive possibilities of glass and is today producing some of the finest work of his career. Moje is recognised both in Australia and internationally as a towering figure in the contemporary crafts movement for his immense contribution to the field as an artist, educator, mentor and advocate. His current practice is divided between wall panels, which closely resemble paintings, and objects – either cylindrical vessels or the flat plates with shallow circular bowl in the centre that are his recurrent vehicle.