Harry Bertoia
(1915 - 1978)
Emigrating to the United states at the age of fifteen, Bertoia studied painting and sculpture at the “Detroit School of Arts and Crafts” and at the “Cranbrook Academy of Arts”.
Drom the Forties he started to work on furniture design, at the same time he was asked to teach painting and metalwork at the “Cranbrook Academy” of Bloomfield Hills in Michigan.
In fact Bertoia started as a painter and sculptor, his famous metal sculptures are the original inspiration of the famous net chairs of the future.
As regards this we want to quote his own statement: “What interests me most in sculpture are the space, the colour and the typical quality of metals” and then ideally moving on to chair design”. “In a chair functional problems must be resolved before anything else (…), but if you consider the object with attention even chairs are studies in space, shape and metal”.
There is a constant comparison with sculpture and he also noted elsewhere in regard to his chairs: “Space crosses through them and looking at them carefully you can see that they are mainly made of air, like a piece of sculpture”.
His design is intended to make the spaces more varied and pleasant by a process of combining both technical and creative work.