Antoine Pierini is a French artist based in Biot, on the French Riviera.

Born in 1980 into a family deeply rooted in the history of glass, he grew up surrounded by the legacy of his father and uncles, leading figures of the French Studio Glass movement. His mother, a passionate naturalist, instilled in him from an early age a profound sensitivity to the forms, rhythms, and structures of the living world.

His work is grounded in a sculptural practice in which glass is never treated as a mere material, but as a language. Light, color, engraving, and accumulation form a distinctive visual vocabulary inspired by the Mediterranean, its landscapes, and its myths. Through refined, often monumental forms, Antoine Pierini explores the invisible forces that shape growth, balance, and transformation in the natural world.

His artistic journey has been shaped through collaborations and residencies across Europe, the United States, and Japan. Among the institutions where he has worked are MusVerre in Sars-Poteries, the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Pilchuck Glass School, the Niijima Glass Art Center, and Cesty Skla – Ways of Glass in the Czech Republic. These experiences enabled him to develop an extensive command of glassmaking techniques, ranging from hot glass and engraving to casting, filigree, murrine, neon, plasma, and vitrigraphy.

In 2015, together with his wife Gaëlle Pierini, he founded the Centre du Verre Contemporain in Biot. For ten years, the center welcomed international artists and played an important role in establishing glass as a field for contemporary artistic experimentation. Gaëlle Pierini’s vision and commitment profoundly shaped his artistic journey. She passed away in 2021 after a courageous battle with illness.

In 2018, Antoine Pierini initiated the Biot International Glass Festival, which has since become a major event on the international contemporary glass scene. Since 2012, he has also played an active role in the cultural partnership between Biot and Tacoma through collaborations with Hilltop Artists and the Museum of Glass.

His practice stands at the intersection of contemporary sculpture, the study of living systems, and a deeply Mediterranean sensibility. Through a refined visual language, Antoine Pierini explores the tensions between memory and presence, permanence and transformation, rootedness and elevation. Matter becomes the place of an essential inquiry: revealing the invisible forces that shape living systems without ever seeking to reproduce them literally.

His work has been exhibited at Villa Kérylos in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, the Museum of Classical Art in Mougins, Glasmuseum Lette, the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, and the Niijima Glass Art Center. His sculptures are also held in public and private collections in France and internationally.

Artistic Statement

Antoine Pierini’s work begins with a sustained attention to the silent forces that shape the living world.

Through glass, light, and engraving, he explores the invisible mechanisms that govern growth, balance, and transformation. His work seeks to reveal the inner architecture of nature rather than its outward appearance.

Accumulation lies at the heart of his practice. One unit calls for another. A form rises, unfolds, and finds its balance within a larger whole. This principle runs through his sculptures just as it runs through living systems, where repetition and variation, order and unpredictability exist in constant dialogue.

Deeply rooted in the light and landscapes of the Mediterranean, his work also carries an existential dimension. It reflects on humanity’s place within the natural world, its desire for mastery, and the fragility of its certainties.

Glass becomes the site of a productive tension. Both fragile and enduring, dense yet permeated by light, it gives form to what usually remains invisible.

By translating the hidden rhythms of living systems into matter, Antoine Pierini creates a sculptural body of work in which every form carries the memory of a larger underlying order.

Artist Profile (english)