168: HARRY BERTOIA, Study for the Fountain at the Philadelphia Civic Center < Treasure Hunting: 40 Years of Lost City Arts, 14 April 2022 < Auctions

Public Masterworks

Monumental Sculptures by Harry Bertoia

Working with the greatest architects of the 20th century, such as Eero Saarinen, Gordon Bunshaft, I.M. Pei, Minoru Yamasaki and Edward Durell Stone, Harry Bertoia created more than fifty large-scale sculptures in prominent public spaces located in cities throughout the United States and around the world (Norway, Venezuela). Like his private works, Bertoia’s commissioned sculptures are aesthetic objects that explore natural phenomena such as light, motion and sound. Much larger in scale, these works function within the broader constraints of architecture, transforming and interacting within the spaces in which they reside.

Multi-Plane screen by Harry Bertoia for General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, 1953

Much larger in scale, these works function within the broader constraints of architecture, transforming and interacting within the spaces in which they reside.

Bertoia’s first large-scale commission was completed in 1953 for the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan designed by Eero Saarinen, a colleague and friend from his days at the Cranbook Academy of Art. For this project, Bertoia created a Multi-Plane screen to separate the restaurant from the entryway of the interior. The welded screen, of brass melt-coated panels connected by rods, features alternating patterns of solids and voids that create a constantly shifting and beautiful play of lights and shadows while providing privacy for those behind it. The following year Bertoia was commissioned by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for the Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company in New York to create a screen dividing the public and private sides of the bank’s main floor. This seminal Multi-Plane screen, nearly twice the size of the work he created for General Motors, located on 5th Avenue in New York, is widely admired and critically acclaimed; it has become the most recognizable work by Harry Bertoia. Also in 1954, Bertoia was invited to design a sculpture for the Chapel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts designed by Eero Saarinen. For the simple brick curved apse with a shell-dome ceiling, Bertoia suspended brass-melt coated panels and cut out shapes from twenty threads behind the altar. The individual elements, increasing in density as they near the floor, capture and reflect the light from the domed roof creating an ethereal experience.

Sculpture by Harry Bertoia for the Chapel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1954

These early masterpieces opened the door to many significant sculptural commissions, both from friends and colleagues as well as other noteworthy architects, and to invitations to participate in internationally acclaimed exhibitions such as the World Fairs of 1957 in Brussels and 1964 in New York. While many of Bertoia’s early large-scale forms were Multi-Plane screens, by the 1960s he was exploring other ideas for public sculpture which paralleled the techniques of his smaller scaled works. Significant projects such as his Dandelion fountain for the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska (Stone 1963), a molten bronze mural for the Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Virginia (Saarinen 1963) and a Welded Form fountain for the Civic Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Stone 1967) illustrate the depth and variety of Bertoia’s unique artistic vision.

Sonambient sculptures by Harry Bertoia for The Standard Oil building, Chicago, 1974

Bertoia repeatedly rose to the challenge of creating works that aligned with the architectural vision for a given space by creating works to highlight and complement the unique characteristics of their environments. Over the course of his career, he created more than 50 large scale public commissions across the globe.

40 Years of Lost City Arts

Jim Elkind, founder Lost City Arts—of one of the most influential design galleries in New York City—has design in his DNA. Elkind grew up in a modernist house full of mid-century modern furniture and spent many weekends traveling into New York with his mother, visiting museums and exploring the city. He fondly recalls her pointing up at the skyscrapers and their architectural details, encouraging and instilling in him a curiosity about his surroundings and an attention to detail that would go on to shape his future career.

The idea to open a gallery originally came to Elkind during a visit to the annual juried art show at University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he attended college. The vetted show featured several hundred artists, many of whom, he realized, were extremely talented but would never make it into the mainstream art world. Taking a page from his entrepreneur father’s book, Elkind imagined opening a gallery in New York called the Gallery of the Unknown Artist where he would feature work by up-and-coming artists from universities around the country.

By 1981, Elkind had begun doing business out of a townhouse basement in Greenwich Village but not as a purveyor of student artworks, rather in architectural salvage. His entry into the world of art and design fortuitously coincided with the passing of Local Law 10 in New York, which required inspections of the facades of any buildings six stories or more. Building owners had been slowly stripping carvings and other decorations for years, but the 1980 Local Law 10 ushered in a multi-year period in which buildings and architectural details were dismantled wholesale. Elkind handed out his card to building managers and demolition companies throughout the city and received a steady stream of calls. Success swiftly followed.

Jim Elkind and lot 219, a spire from the Woolworth Building, New York

Elkind founded Lost City Arts in 1982 and by 1985 he had moved to Lafayette Street in Soho. The neighborhood featured a nucleus of design-minded galleries—Urban Archaeology, Secondhand Rose, and 280 Modern—and attracted an impressive array of clientele from celebrities and film directors to architects and designers. Meg Ryan, Brad Pitt, Joel Schumacher, Spike Lee, and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison have all, at one time or another, been clients of Lost City Arts.

“If there is a common ethos to the countless pieces bought and sold at Lost City Arts, it is that they have a human quality that makes them easy to live with and they are imbued with a little magic. People want beauty and comfort in their living spaces. We give them both.” – Jim Elkind

Over the years, as the interest in architectural salvage waned, Elkind reinvented his gallery, offering more fun and eclectic designs like Coca Cola signs and gas pumps, and eventually—as those clients matured and had families—coming full circle back to the modern design and art of his childhood years. His keen eye and appreciation for Danish works developed as a result of his many sojourns to and from his wife’s native country, and he became a passionate supporter and representative of Harry Bertoia’s work, which he describes in a single word: sublime.

Interior of Lost City Arts in the early 1990s with lot 164 in the center, a panel from the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel

Elkind’s connection to Bertoia began at a Sotheby’s auction in the mid-aughts, where he saw Sonambient sculptures on display. Enamored by their combination of form, motion, and sound, he called Harry’s son, Val, and visited him in Bally, PA. He bought several of Harry’s works during the visit and, feeling strongly that the artist was both underappreciated and undervalued, began the journey of collecting Bertoia and building a market for his work. Elkind’s championing of Harry Bertoia played a major part in the exponential growth in interest surrounding the artist, and Elkind is now considered to be one of the leading authorities on his oeuvre.

More recently, Lost City Arts continued its decades-long success with a move to the New York Design Center at Lexington Avenue where their neighbors include everyone from important design manufacturers to vintage and period dealers. Recognizing the changing market for art and antiques, the gallery positioned itself as a global one-stop shop, and Elkind’s almost preternatural ability to identify trends and changes in the art and design world made him a coveted resource for both trade and retail customers alike.

For more than four decades, Jim Elkind’s excitement for art and design and his passion for rediscovering and reviving interest in the arts and artists that may have been forgotten or overlooked have shepherded whole fields of collecting. From monumental sculpture to palm-sized jewelry and fine art to tabletop objects, Elkind’s ability to see beauty in many different forms is evident in everything that passes through his doors.