Exhibition Reviews | Visual Arts

Harry Bertoia: A Legacy in Form, Space and Sound

Exhibit featuring sculptures and framed abstract drawings. The sculptures include a spiked spherical metal structure on a pedestal and a large hanging bronze piece with a central cutout. Drawings on the wall depict abstract circular and structural forms.

Examples of Bertoia’s work from the 1950s and 1960s shows the relationship between his sculpture and his two-dimensional work.

What happens to an artist’s work when they die? The select few will be fought over at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Most will become a burden to their heirs: what to keep, what can sell, what to do with all the rest? Somewhere in between, among the mid-tier artists and those with enough money to provide for a legacy, is the artist foundation which gives the artist a second and sometimes unpredictable life. When Harry Bertoia died in Pennsylvania in 1978, he had no relationship to Utah or its art world. But his daughter Cynthia has made a life for herself in Utah, and through her work with the Harry Bertoia Foundation, Bertoia’s work has received recognition thousands of miles away from his Rust Belt home, most recently in Southern Utah Museum of Art’s (SUMA) Harry Bertoia: Master Modernist.

Bertoia was a prolific and innovative artist who masterfully blurred the lines between art, design, and sculpture. His work, spanning from furniture design to abstract sculptures and printmaking, reflects a consistent exploration of form, material, and the interplay of two-dimensional and three-dimensional spaces.

Born in Italy in 1915, Harry Bertoia immigrated to Detroit with his family at the age of 15. He earned scholarships to the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts and the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he found early success as an abstract artist. His time at Cranbrook was pivotal, connecting him with influential artists and architects, including Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen. After working with Eames on experimental projects in California, Bertoia shifted his focus to functional art, creating the iconic wire-form furniture designs for Knoll, Inc. in the 1950s. Despite his success in furniture design, Bertoia never abandoned his passion for fine art, continuing to explore metal sculpture and printmaking, blending forms and ideas across media throughout his career.

brown, and green, with thin lines intersecting the shapes on a textured background.

Harry Bertoia, Untitled, 1940s, ink on japanese paper, monotype, block-printed

In the 1940s, while still a student at Cranbrook, Bertoia achieved early success with his nonobjective work: a complete portfolio of prints was purchased by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Non-Objective Paintings (now just The Guggenheim). His prints from this period display abstract, geometric compositions that explore balance and form through color and line. Untitled (1945-48) reveals a grid-like arrangement of rectangular forms in muted shades of green, blue, and ochre, with subtle variations that evoke the rhythm of nature. Another piece, a vibrant monotype, showcases a pattern of vertical bars, each marked with different colors and textures, suggesting a careful exploration of repetition and variation. The abstract forms in his prints echo designs seen in his later furniture and sculptures, as seen in the arrangement of works surrounding one of his iconic wire-form chairs, further illustrating the interplay between his two-dimensional and three-dimensional works. Bertoia’s mastery of form allowed him to seamlessly transition from the tactile nature of sculpture to the flat surface of paper, demonstrating his versatility as an artist.

Gallery display of modern art, including five framed abstract pieces with geometric designs. The display is arranged above a white wire chair with a cushioned seat.

One of Bertoia’s chair design surrounded by examples of his non-objective print work.

Bertoia is perhaps best known for his iconic wire-form furniture like the Diamond Chair, a piece that encapsulates his ability to balance functionality and art. The geometric web of metal wires in this piece acts as a precursor to his later sculptural works. The grid-like structure of the furniture is echoed in many of his sculptures and monotypes, showing the fluidity with which he transferred ideas between mediums. In the sculpture, metal is no longer just a structural support but becomes the subject itself, bending and shaping in space to create intricate landscapes and abstract compositions. The exhibit highlights this cross-pollination beautifully, positioning Bertoia’s metal sculptures alongside his prints and drawings. Viewers are invited to trace the repetition of forms across different media. In one area, his abstract sculptures, resembling intertwined organic shapes, sit next to monotypes that exhibit a similar flow and movement. Some of his monotypes show rectangular blocks arranged in gridded patterns, reminiscent of the metal wires in his furniture designs. Similarly, the organic, swirling forms in his prints echo the shapes of his sound sculptures, suggesting that his explorations in one medium directly influenced his work in another.

As he worked with metal, Bertoia discovered that metal wires, when structured and arranged in certain ways, could create both visual and auditory experiences, thereby expanding the sensory engagement of his art. These works are not static—they invite interaction, as they produce harmonic sounds when touched. Along with his musician brother, he created a series of recordings from these sculptures and the exhibition offers performances on the sound sculptures on an hourly basis.

This exhibition offers an in-depth look at Bertoia’s multi-faceted career, revealing the threads that connect his different practices. From furniture to sculpture to printmaking, Bertoia’s work is unified by his innovative use of materials and his exploration of form. Whether through the tactile experience of his sound sculptures or the visual rhythm of his prints, Bertoia’s work encourages us to engage with art as a multi-sensory experience, transcending the boundaries between the visual, the physical, and the auditory.

Abstract art display featuring two framed line drawings with crisscrossing lines, along with three minimalist hanging sculptures resembling crossed sticks, all set within a minimalist gallery space.

An example of Bertoia’s large-scale sound sculptures, right, stand in front two- and three-dimensional works exploring similar motifs.

Harry Bertoia: Master Modernist, Southern Utah Museum of Art, Cedar City, through Sep. 28

All images courtesy of the author

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