Harry Bertoia
Harry Bertoia (March 10, 1915 – November 6, 1978[1]) was an Italian-born American artist, sound art sculptor, and modern furniture designer.
Harry Bertoia
March 10, 1915
November 6, 1978 (aged 63)
Italian, American
Brigitta Valentiner
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.[2]
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.[3] 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.
Other work[edit]
Bertoia was the sculptor commissioned to create the Marshall University fountain in Huntington, West Virginia, to honor the university's football team in the wake of the plane crash that killed them on November 14, 1970. For more information on the disaster, see Marshall University air disaster.
The 1954 Gordon Bunshaft building for Manufacturer's Hanover Trust-now JPMorgan Chase (510 Fifth Avenue at West 43rd Street, New York City) included a full building-width, second-floor screen-sculpture by Bertoia.[7] It was dismantled and removed in 2010 by J. P. Morgan Chase.[8]
At some point after 2011, the screen-sculpture was re-installed on the second floor, where it is now on view. Since October 2016, this location is the global flagship for The North Face, a California-based outdoor lifestyle brand.
Bertoia was also commissioned to make a screen sculpture for the Embassy of the United States in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1958. The building, located in the Chacao Municipality (former Sucre District), now serves as the headquarters of Venezuela's Ministry of the People's Power for Tourism, while the embassy was moved to a bigger site in Valle Arriba in 1995. Bertoia's sculpture, spanning the entire vertical length of the building, is still in place.
The 'Golden Sun' was commissioned in 1967 for The Whiting, an auditorium in Flint, Michigan. Seven feet in diameter, the spherical sculpture consists of 675 gold-plated stainless steel branches and hangs in the building's lobby.[9]
Personal life[edit]
In 1943 Bertoia married fellow Cranbrook student Brigitta Valentiner (daughter of Wilhelm Valentiner, then director of the Detroit Institute of Arts).[2] They had three children; a son, Val, and two daughters, Lesta and Celia.[10] One grandson and two granddaughters (one who died young), and three great grandchildren have carried on his lineage. Some members of the subsequent two generations are engaged in artistic endeavors. Bertoia died of lung cancer in Barto, Pennsylvania, at the age of 63 on November 6, 1978 and is buried underneath one of the sculptural gongs he created.[11] Brigitta Valentiner, died in 2007, aged 87.