Harry Bertoia: In the Great Oneness: Drawings, Sculpture & Sound

Hosfelt Gallery mounts the first major West Coast presentation of Harry Bertoia’s work since his 1956 exhibition at SFMOMA.

One of the defining figures of Mid-Century Modernism, Harry Bertoia (1915–1978) made sculptures, drawings and jewelry; designed furniture that would prove to be iconic; executed more than 50 large-scale architectural commissions; and experimented with sound by performing on sculptures he crafted to be both formally beautiful and euphonic. More than 60 sculptures and drawings from the 1940s to late 1970s illustrate the technical skill of a master and vision of a genius.

In sculptures, made primarily from bronze or beryllium copper, Bertoia frequently referred to nature as a means of expressing the infinite. Forms suggest blossoms, grasses, seedheads, willows or corals. Others seem to refer to totemic figures, mineral deposits, meteorites or mycelium. The surfaces -- sometimes polished, sometimes sensuously encrusted, can seem sedimentary, biological or botanical.

In 1960, Bertoia began making sculptures he called “Sonambients,” which are as much about the sounds of vibrating metal as they are about the form of an object. In them, Harry Bertoia re-imagined the very purpose of sculpture, turning it into a multi-sensory encounter -- visual, tactile, and acoustic. This was revolutionary.

Though renowned for his furniture, ambitious public projects, and sculpture, Bertoia’s mostly unknown works on paper are the constant throughline -- and perhaps heart -- of his practice. Delicate and sensuous, they provide an intimate view into a maestro’s imagination. Each is immediate, intuitive, inventive and not surprisingly, virtuosic.

Born in Northern Italy, Bertoia immigrated to the United States when he was 15, joining his older brother in Detroit. He studied at the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts before receiving a scholarship to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1937. In the community of Cranbrook -- which included Walter Gropius, Eero Saarinen, Ray and Charles Eames, Edmund N. Bacon and Florence Knoll -- he formed relationships that would put him in the center of 20th Century design.

In 1943, he moved to California, where he was part of the team that developed the Eames Lounge Chair. Then, at the invitation of Florence Knoll, he moved to Pennsylvania, where he designed the legendary and eponymous wire furniture collection that continues to be produced by Knoll 75 years after its introduction. Commissioned by architects and designers such as Eero Saarinen, Gordon Bunshaft, I.M. Pei, Henry Dreyfuss, Minoru Yamasaki and Edward Durell Stone, he accomplished architectural works that continue to define Mid-Century Modernism.

Harry Bertoia’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, among many, many others. It has been the subject of major surveys at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas and the Cranbrook Art Museum, and his public works can be seen in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Dallas, Düsseldorf, Brussels, and the campuses of Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2022, the Nasher Sculpture Center produced SCULPTING SOUND: Twelve Musicians Encounter Bertoia, a series of six concerts using Bertoia’s “Sonambient” sculptures as instruments.

Opening reception: Saturday, 6 September, 3–5 PM