Harry Bertoia
Harry Bertoia
1915 - 1978
American sculptor and furniture designer of Italian birth. After settling in the USA in 1930, he studied at the Society of Arts and Crafts, Detroit (1936), and the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI (1937–9), where he taught metalworking and produced abstract silver jewellery and colour monoprints. In 1943 he moved to California to assist in the development of the first of a series of chairs designed by Charles O. Eames. His first sculptures date from the late 1940s. In 1950 he established himself in Bally, PA, where he designed the Bertoia chair (1952), several forms of which were marketed by KNOLL INTERNATIONAL. His furniture is characterized by the use of moulded and welded wire; in the case of the Bertoia chair, the chromium-plated steel wire is reshaped by the weight of the sitter. Bertoia also worked on small sculptures, directly forged or welded bronzes. The first of his many large architectural sculptures was a screen commissioned in 1953 for Eero Saarinen’s General Motors Technical Center in Detroit; subsequent commissions included the bronze mural (1963) at the Dulles International Airport, Chantilly, VA, and the fountain (1967) at the Civic Center, Philadelphia. Bertoia’s work, both graphic and sculptural, shows a combination of strong, organic shapes and intricately textured details.
From 1960 he began to concentrate on making sound sculptures, which have the generic title Sonambient and are visually simpler. Most of them consist of vertical bunches of metal rods mounted on a base; when caused to strike against each other the rods produce sounds ranging from delicate rustlings to bell-like peals. Bertoia also constructed chime-like ‘swinging bars’ and circular or rectangular ‘gongs’ in various sizes; the largest of these (diam. 2.5 m) stands over his grave. [Hugh Davies. "Bertoia, Harry." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 3, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T008389.]
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