HARRY BERTOIA (1915-1978)

Harry Bertoia was born in San Lorenzo, Italy, and came to America in 1930. In 1936, he studied at the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts and then attended Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield, Michigan, where he later taught and established the metalworking department. During this time, he began experimenting with jewelry forms and explored ideas that would later emerge into his sculpture.

In 1943, he moved to Venice, California and worked with designer Charles Eames in war efforts until 1946. That first year, he attended a welding class at Santa Monica City College. In 1947, he moved to La Jolla to work in the Point Loma Navel Electronics Laboratory in the publications department creating training manuals for equipment operators. During this time, he continued making jewelry and monoprints and began his first experiments with metal sculpture.

In 1949, he moved to Barto, Pennsylvania where he joined Hans Knoll in Knoll Associates. He became a prolific architectural sculptor. His first commission was a screen for the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. His first sculpture exhibition was in 1951 at the Knoll Showroom in New York.

It was his custom not to sign his works because he believed that the piece itself was a signature, that what he created belonged to the universe, and that a signature called attention to the artist rather than the work of art.

BERTOIA'S MONOTYPES

Harry Bertoia developed his monotype technique while teaching at the Cranbook Academy of Art in Michigan. Eager to have his work evaluated by a qualified, disinterested obsever, he sent about 100 of these pieces to the Guggenheim Museum in New York; to his astonishment the director of the musuem purchased all of them, some for the museum and some for herself. Nineteen of the works were displayed in a show there in 1943, alongside works by Moholy-Nagy, Werner Drewes, Charles Smith and others. He continued producing the monotypes while living in La Jolla and Topanga Canyon. Bertoia's 1940s monotypes were the source for virtually all of his later work and are enormously important to the history of experimental printmaking. The aritst himself became increasingly reluctant to part with them later in life, as he considered them 'irreplaceable'.

"Bertoia's monographics are the result of a combination of drawing methods hand-printed, either from repeated woodblocks or through the use of a glass plate, a brayer, and hand pressure. Like many other artists who have taken up the medium, he was never taught any montype processes. Consequently his tools and procedures were innovative. It is often extremely difficult to determine exactly how a particular effect was achieved. Their complexity is what intrigues but it often takes these prints out of the category of 'pure montype'. Considered as monographics, however, they rival the best in modern experimental printmaking." -Nelson, June Kompass, Harry Bertoia, Printmaker

Abstraction

Monotype on rice paper, circa 8-1/2 x 11". 1940s. Acquired from the artist while he lived at Pueblo Ribera in La Jolla, circa 1947. Framed.

Abstraction

Monotype on rice paper, circa 11 x 8-/12". 1940s. Acquired from the artist while he lived at Pueblo Ribera in La Jolla, circa 1947. Framed.