Overview

Italian-born American artist Harry Bertoia (1915-1978) was one of the most prolific, innovative artists of the post-war period. Trained at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he met future colleagues and collaborators Charles and Ray Eames, Florence Knoll, and Eero Saarinen, he went on to make one-of-a kind jewellery, design iconic chairs, create thousands of unique sculptures including large-scale commissions for significant buildings, and advance the use of sound as sculptural material. His work speaks to the confluence of numerous fields of endeavour, but is united throughout by a sculptural approach to making and an experimental embrace of metal. Harry Bertoia: Sculpting Mid-Century Modern Life accompanies the first U.S. museum retrospective of the artist's career to examine the full scope of his broad, interdisciplinary practice, and feature important examples of his furniture, jewellery, monotypes, and diverse sculptural output. Lavishly illustrated, the book offers new scholarly essays as well as a catalogue of the artists numerous large-scale commissions. It questions how and why we distinguish between a chair, a necklace, a screen, and a freestanding sculpture and what Bertoia's sculptural things, when taken together, say about the fluidity of visual language across culture, both at mid-century and now. AUTHORS: Jed Morse is an art historian and Chief Curator at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. Marin R. Sullivan is an independent curator and art historian based in Chicago. She is the Director of the Harry Bertoia Catalogue Raisonne. SELLING POINTS: . Offers a fresh view of the work of Harry Bertoia, a major figure of mid 20th-century American art and design, based on recent research by a new generation of expert scholars who examine the full scope of his broad, interdisciplinary practice . Reconsiders the impact of Bertoia's innovations in design, sculpture, and architecture at mid-century and now . Published in conjunction with the first U.S. museum retrospective of the entire career of this quintessential mid-century American artist at Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas 180 colour illustrations

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9783858818621

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"""Collectively, they proffer a compelling reassessment of an artist whose work is too often dismissed as either purely functional or purely decorative. The essays complement numerous excellent color illustrations, which include several rarely seen works.""-- ""Choice"""

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Jed Morse is an art historian and Chief Curator at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. Marin R. Sullivan is an independent curator and art historian based in Chicago. She is the Director of the Harry Bertoia Catalogue Raisonné and serves as Curator-at-Large at Cheekwood Estate and Gardens in Nashville.

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