Take Wire. Add Poetry. With a bundle of wire (and years of thought), Harry Bertoia made a chair that has become a classic of our time. It is as intriguing to look at as a cobweb—and as brilliantly engineered. A child can lift it. A man can jump up and down on it. Inspiration and practical good sense came together here.
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This work is from the collection of Dr. Henry and Betty Corwin. Dr. Corwin, renowned by profession, had a great appreciation for the arts and aesthetics. An avid sculptor himself, Dr. Corwin created works in bronze, wood and brass. He was greatly inspired by the work of Alberto Giacometti, whom he visited and whose art he collected. In 1955, he and his wife hired Richard Neurta to design their Connecticut home which they filled with the art they loved. This work has remained in the family collection until now.
Harry Bertoia 1915–1978
Harry Bertoia was a true Renaissance man well-versed in the language of art and design. Born in San Lorenzo, Italy in 1915, Bertoia relocated to the United States at the age of fifteen and enrolled at Cass Technical High School in Detroit to study hand-made jewelry. In 1937, Bertoia was awarded a scholarship to attend the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan where he was drawn to the mostly empty metal shop and, after two years in the program, was invited to head the department.
At Cranbrook, Bertoia was introduced to a number of designers whose names would become synonymous with mid-century modern design. Here he met Eero Saarinen, with whom he would collaborate on numerous architectural projects, and Charles and Ray Eames with whom, for a short period during the war, he would work for at the Molded Plywood Division of Evans Products in California. In 1950, Bertoia moved east to Pennsylvania to open his own studio and to work with Florence Knoll designing chairs. 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.
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.
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