Harry Bertoia

(1915-1978) sculptor and designer

Luca Perlini · August 30, 2016 · 3 min read

Harry Bertoia was born in 1915 in San Lorenzo di Arzene, in the province of Pordenone, Italy, and died in Pennsylvania, USA, in 1978.

An Italian-born sculptor, he was a leading figure at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, the important institution associated with some of the most famous designers of the twentieth century, such as Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames and Florence Schust Knoll.

In 1930 he emigrated to the United States, to Detroit.

He studied at Cass Technical High School in Detroit, where he worked on jewellery and painting.

In 1937 he won a scholarship to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where he later set up and ran the metalworking workshop until 1943.

In those years he began to take an interest in furniture: he taught at Cranbrook at the same time as Charles Eames headed the industrial design department.

The two designers exchanged ideas and suggestions. Bertoia would present his chairs about a year after Eames's wire chair came out: although they used similar materials and techniques, his chairs achieved a completely different sculptural result.

In 1943 he moved to California and worked with Charles Eames on experiments in moulding plywood for leg splints and aircraft parts.

In 1950 he moved to Pennsylvania at the invitation of Knoll, for whom he designed a series of chairs in steel rod.

He is known all over the world for these chairs, including the Diamond Chair and the Bird Chair (1952): with their wire mesh structure they became icons of modern design, thanks to a material never used before for furniture.

Bertoia's furniture, like his sculpture, expresses his idea of art as a meeting point between form and space.

His finest expression is perhaps the Bird Chair, which recalls a bird with outstretched wings: organic, almost living forms translated into art.

For the chapel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he made a large sculptural metal screen.

From 1953 he was a consultant to Knoll and devoted himself mainly to sculpture.

In 1956 he received the Craftsmanship Medal of the American Institute of Architects, as well as many other awards and teaching posts.

Bertoia always considered himself a sculptor, but he was able to bring his metalworking experience to design and the applied arts too, with results that made history.

Among his most significant designs: