An Inscribed Copy
HARRY BERTOIA SCULPTOR
June Kompass Nelson
Detroit: Wayne State University, 1970. First edition. Small square quarto. Tan cloth titled in black. Photo illustrated dust jacket. 138 pp. 85 black and white plates. INSCRIBED by Bertoia to front free endpaper. Pair of 1998 exhibition brochures laid in. Uncoated jacket worn along top edge with a pair of short, closed tears and chipped spine crown. Cloth uniformly sunned to edges, interior unmarked and very clean. A nearly fine copy in a very good dust jacket.
9.25 x 9.75 hardcover book with 138 pages with 85 black and white plates of Bertoia’s varied work in jewelry, stabiles, wire constructions, Knoll chair designs, braised metal screens, spill cast bronze, rod and tube fountains, stainless steel sprays/dandelions, bushes and sounding sculptures. Also includes a timeline and bibliography.
The finest book to date on the prolific sculptor/designer Harry Bertoia. Nelson thoroughly covers the progression of his work from jewelry to the sounding sculptures for which he is best known, and illustrates his work with photographs of both public and private pieces. June Kompass Nelson also wrote Harry Bertoia Printmaker, 1988.
Italian artist and furniture designer, Harry Bertoia (1916 – 1978) was thirty-seven years old when he designed the patented Diamond chair for Knoll in 1952. An unusually beautiful piece of furniture, it was strong yet delicate in appearance, and an immediate commercial success in spite of being made almost entirely by hand. With the Diamond chair, Bertoia created an icon of modern design and introduced a new material, industrial wire mesh to the world of furniture design.
Bertoia’s career began in the 1930’s as a student at the Cranbrook Academy of Art where he re-established the metal-working studio and, as head of that department, taught from 1939 until 1943 when it was closed due to wartime restrictions on materials. During the war, Bertoia moved to Venice, California, and worked with Charles and Ray Eames at the Evans Products Company, developing new techniques for molding plywood.
1946 was a pivotal year for Bertoia. He became an American citizen, moved to Bally, Pennsylvania, near the Knoll factory and established his own design and sculpting studio where he produced numerous successful designs for Knoll. Bertoia designed five chairs out of wire that would become icons of the period, all of them popular and all still in production today.
The success of his chair designs for Knoll afforded Bertoia the means to pursue his artistic career and by the mid-1950s he was dedicated exclusively to his art. Using traditional materials in non-traditional ways, Bertoia created organic sculptural works uniting sound, form and motion. From sculptures sold to private buyers to large-scale installations in the public realm, Bertoia developed an artistic language that is at once recognizable but also uniquely his own.
As a sculptor, Bertoia created abstract freestanding metal works, some of which resonated with sound when touched or had moving elements that chimed in the wind. Bertoia received awards from the American Institute of Architects in 1973 and the American Academy of Letters in 1975. All of his work bears the hallmarks of a highly skilled and imaginative sculptor, as well as an inventive designer, deeply engaged with the relationship between form and space.
Today Bertoia’s works can be found in various private and numerous public collections, including: The Art Institute of Chicago, Denver Art Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., Museum of Modern Art, New York, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.