Harry Bertoia

Harry Bertoia (March 10, 1915 – November 6, 1978 ) was an Italian-born American artist, sound art sculptor, and modern furniture designer.

Bertoia was born in San Lorenzo d'Arzene, Pordenone, Italy.

At age 15, given the opportunity to move to Detroit, Harry chose to adventure to America and live with his older brother, Oreste.

After learning English and the bus schedule, he enrolled in Cass Technical High School, where he studied art and design and learned the skill of handmade jewelry making ca.1930–1936.

At that time, there were three jewelry and metals teachers Louise Green, Mary Davis, and Greta Pack.

In 1936 he attended the Art School of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts, now known as the College for Creative Studies.

The following year in 1937 he received a scholarship to study at the Cranbrook Academy of Art where he encountered Walter Gropius, Edmund N. Bacon, Ray and Charles Eames, and Florence Knoll for the first time.

Starting out as a painting student but soon being asked to reopen the metal workshop in 1939, Bertoia taught jewelry design and metal work.

Later, as the war effort made metal a rare and very expensive commodity he began to focus his efforts on jewelry making, even designing and creating wedding rings for Ray Eames and Edmund Bacon's wife Ruth.

When all the metal was taken up by war efforts, he became the graphics instructor.

Still at Cranbrook, in 1943 he married Brigitta Valentiner, and then moved to California to work for Charles and Ray at the Molded Plywood Division of the Evans Product Company.

Bertoia also learned welding techniques at Santa Monica College and began experimenting with sound sculptures.

Bertoia worked there until 1946, then sold his jewelry and monotypes until obtaining work with the Electronics Naval Lab in La Jolla.

In 1950, he was invited to move to Pennsylvania to work with Hans and Florence Knoll.

(Florence studied also at Cranbrook.) During this period he designed five wire pieces that became known as the Bertoia Collection for Knoll.

Among these was the famous diamond chair, a fluid, sculptural form made from a welded lattice work of steel.

In Bertoia's own words, "If you look at these chairs, they are mainly made of air, like sculpture. Space passes right through them."

The chairs were produced with varying degrees of upholstery over their light grid-work, and they were handmade at first because a suitable mass production process could not be found.

Unfortunately, the chair edge utilized two thin wires welded on either side of the mesh seat.

This design had been granted a patent to the Eames for the wire chair produced by Herman Miller.

Herman Miller eventually won and Bertoia & Knoll redesigned the seat edge, using a thicker, single wire, and grinding down the edge of the seat wires at a smooth angle—the same way the chairs are still produced.

Nonetheless, the commercial success enjoyed by Bertoia's diamond chair was immediate.

In the mid-1950s, the chairs being produced by Knoll sold so well that the lump sum payment arrangement from Knoll allowed Bertoia to devote himself exclusively to sculpture.

He ultimately produced over 50 commissioned public sculptures, many of which remain viewable.

In the 1960s, he began experimenting with sounding sculptures of tall vertical rods on flat bases.

He renovated the old barn into an atypical concert hall and put in about 100 of his favorite "Sonambient" sculptures.

Bertoia played the pieces in a number of concerts and even produced a series of eleven albums, all entitled "Sonambient," of the music made by his art, manipulated by his hands along with the elements of nature.

The sound sculptures are also featured on a 1975 record titled "The Sound of Sound Sculpture".

Bertoia's work can be found in The Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, Massachusetts), the Brooklyn Museum (New York City), the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Dallas Public Library, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington D.C.), the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City, Missouri), the Nasher Sculpture Center (Dallas, Texas), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Reading Public Museum (Reading, Pennsylvania), the Allentown Art Museum, Milwaukee art museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.), the Vero Beach Museum of Art (Vero Beach, Florida), and the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, Minnesota).

Bertoia's "Sunburst Sculpture" owned by the Joslyn Art Museum was originally installed in the Joslyn's Fountain Court.

It is now

located in the lobby of the Milton R. Abrahams Branch of the Omaha Public Library.

In the late 1990s, his daughter found a large collection of near mint condition original albums stored away on his property in Pennsylvania.

These were sold as collector's items.

It was only in 2005 that Bertoia's asymmetrical chaise longue was introduced at the Milan Furniture Fair and sold out immediately.

In 2015, these Sonambient recordings were re-issued by Important Records as a box set with a booklet of the history and previously unseen photos.

In 2019, the Harry Bertoia Foundation launched a catalogue raisonné project, which seeks to document and research the diverse and extensive artistic practice of the artist.

The goal is to provide a comprehensive record and resource of Bertoia's work, and will include his painting, graphics (including monotypes), furniture, jewelry, metalwork, sound recordings, and sculpture.

An ongoing project, the Harry Bertoia Catalogue Raisonné will be available online, published in stages, and regularly updated to reflect ongoing research.

It will be accessible to scholars, educators, collectors, arts professionals, and any member of the public wishing to gain a deeper understanding of Bertoia's work.