Born in Italy on March 10, 1915, Harry BERTOIA is a naturalized Italian-American sculptor and designer.
At the age of 15, Harry BERTOIA travelled to Detroit to visit his older brother.
He chose to stay and enrolled in Cass Technical High School, where he studied art and design and learned handcrafted jewellery.
In 1938, he attended the Art School of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts.
The following year he received a scholarship to study at the Cranbrook Educational Community, where he first met Walter Gropius, Edmund Bacon, and Charles and Ray Eames.
He opened his own metal workshop in 1939 and taught jewellery design and metalwork.
In 1943, Harry BERTOIA married Brigitta Valentiner and moved to California to work for Charles and Ray Eames in the moulded plywood division of Evans Product Company.
He remained there until the end of the war in September 1945.
After contributing to the creation of the Wire chair, Harry BERTOIA left Eames in 1950 and moved to Pennsylvania to establish his own studio with Hans and Florence Knoll.
During this period, he designed five pieces of wire mesh furniture, including the famous Diamond chair, known as the Bertoia collection for Knoll.
By the mid-1950s, Knoll's furniture was selling so well that his income allowed him to devote himself exclusively to sculpture.
In 1953, thanks to his friend the designer Eero Saarinen, Harry BERTOIA received his first commission to create a sculpture for the General Motors technical centre.
In 1955, Saarinen commissioned him to create the altar for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology chapel.
In 1957, he received a grant from the Graham Foundation in Chicago.
In 1960, Harry BERTOIA began creating sound sculptures.
His work explores how metal, by stretching and bending, can, when subjected to wind or touch, produce different tones.
He performed live with his creations and recorded a dozen albums, all entitled Sonambient, based on the music created by his sculptures.
Until his death, Harry Bertoia created more than 50 public sculptures that were exhibited in cities throughout the United States and abroad.

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