“A decade ago, if you mentioned Harry Bertoia, people would say, ‘He’s just a chair designer,’ without realizing that he spent only two years making chairs,” muses Jim Elkind of New York-based Lost City Arts. The artist’s name is synonymous with that ubiquitous icon of midcentury modern, the steel mesh Diamond chair, designed for Knoll in 1952. In the decades since its release, a quarter of a million Diamond chairs in various forms and materials have rolled off the Knoll production line. It is an astounding figure, considering Bertoia was paid a lump sum of $20,000 for the design of the chair, which Knoll continues to offer for $1,166.While original Diamond chairs on the secondary market seldom surpass that retail figure, prices for Bertoia’s sculptural works have been steadily on the rise. They crossed the half-million-dollar mark at auction in November 2012 when his 7-foot-wide, brass-coated Screen Tree, circa 1955, sold for an artist record $578,500 on an estimate of $150,000 to $200,000 at the postwar and contemporary day sale at Christie’s New York. At that same sale, his 6-foot sound sculpture, Untitled (Sonambient), circa 1975, brought $422,500 on an estimate of $40,000 to $60,000.“In hindsight, my father wondered if he had made the right decision in choosing a single payment instead of a lifetime of royalties,” says Celia Bertoia, the artist’s daughter and head of the Bertoia Foundation. “But the money bought him a certain freedom. He was able to buy our Pennsylvania farmhouse, and the time to pursue what interested him most, his sculptures: the dandelion, willow, and bush forms; the sprays; the melts; and the tonals, which he began experimenting with in 1960.”The tonals, or sonambients, are kinetic works composed of dozens of metal rods — most of beryllium copper — mounted vertically on a bronze or slate base and often capped with larger, weighted metal cylinders. The pieces range in size from diminutive tabletop models to works towering some 20 feet. When stroked, their ductile rods sway like blades of grass in the wind, producing a sound that is at once ethereal, haunting, and hypnotic, the pitch of each a function of its size and material composition. In time, Bertoia’s sonambients would be joined by other sound sculptures, gongsand plate-clad columns, designed to be struck with a percussionist’s mallet.Over the course of a decade Bertoia created more than a hundred tonals, gongs, and columns for the stone barn in Pennsylvania, which he used as a “sound studio” and ad hoc concert hall, offering weekly performances for invited guests. He also produced 11 recordings of his compositions, which are being reissued in celebration of the centennial of the artist’s birth next month.“My father often said the inspiration for the sound sculptures came from childhood memories of Gypsies from Hungary passing through the Friulian village where he was born,” says Celia, adding that the Gypsies would earn money repairing pots, pans, and other kitchen utensils. “Harry found beauty in the cacophonous clanging of metals as they wielded their hammers.”Born in March 1915 in San Lorenzo, 50 miles north of Venice, Bertoia accompanied his father on a trip to the States in 1930 to visit his older brother, Oreste, who had settled in Detroit. Choosing to remain in Michigan, Bertoia soon anglicized his birth name, Arieto, and enrolled in Cass Technical High School, a public institution with a program for students gifted in arts and sciences. By his midteens, Bertoia’s talents were already evident in paintings, drawings, and monotypes, which he continued to produce throughout his career. (The monotypes, many of them studies for his later sculptures, can be found on the market for $1,500 to $8,500.) In 1937 he entered the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he met Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, and Florence Schust Knoll, all of whom would influence his later work. Bertoia died at age 63 in November 1978, succumbing to lung cancer brought on in part by exposure to the toxic fumes of his forge.“Bertoia was really ahead of his time,” says midcentury modern specialist Richard Wright of the Chicago-based Wright auction house, who has been instrumental in cultivating the market for Bertoia since the house held its first sale of his works in June 2000. At that time few sculptures had appeared on the block, and Bertoia’s reputation as an artist had faded to a large degree in the wake of his death. Since then, Wright says, he has witnessed sustained growth in demand, with more than 600 Bertoia pieces passing through the house. These have included the 10-foot-high Untitled (Monumental Sonambient), 1975, which commanded $374,500 against an ambitious estimate of $400,000 to $600,000 in a June 2013 sale of 17 large tonal works commissioned by the Standard Oil Company to grace a public plaza in front of its Edward Durell Stone-designed headquarters in Chicago. (In June 1975 both the Art Institute of Chicago and the Fairweather Hardin Gallery presented exhibitions of Bertoia’s work in celebration of the sculptures’ unveiling.)Bertoia undertook some 50 important public commissions during his career, collaborating with other notable architects such as I.M. Pei, Gordon Bunshaft, and Saarinen. These included a skylit work that encircles the altar in the Saarinen-designed chapel at MIT, and a screen for his General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan.In addition to the tonals, Bertoia’s dandelions and bush forms have performed well on the block. In March 2013 an 11-foot-tall Dandelion from 1961, commissioned by the Hilton Hotel in Denver, brought $566,500 (est. $150–200,000) at Christie’s New York. Last May another Dandelion, circa 1960, a 7-foot-high gilt stainless-steel-and-brass version bearing a $100,000-to-$150,000 estimate, sold at the same house for $197,000. Since 2007, Sotheby’s New York, which hosted a private selling exhibition of Bertoia’s work last spring, has sold four dandelions in the range of $150,000 to $230,000. “With their radiating dynamism,” says Wright, “the dandelions are hard not to like.” While the artist record for a bush form at auction was set by the 5½-foot-high Bush, circa 1965, which brought $446,500 at Sotheby’s in November 2010, most of these works tend to trade in the neighborhood of $100,000.Although prices for the sound sculptures, dandelions, and bush forms have steadily trended upward, the same cannot be said for the spray forms, which have delivered a mixed performance on the block. In April 2014, a 5-foot-high Spray, circa 1970, sold for $75,000 on an estimate of $50,000 to $70,000 at Heritage Auctions in Dallas. In March, a smaller Spray from the 1950s sold for an eye-opening $68,750 at Sotheby’s New York on an estimate of $10,000 to $15,000. Yet the sprays often buy in.“Harry did not sign his works, and there are a lot of knockoffs out there in the marketplace,” says Celia Bertoia. “Given the relative simplicity of the spray’s design, it was fairly easy to replicate.” Benjamin Storck of Los Angeles-based Galerie XX adds that many of the sprays he has seen on the market are just “not right.” If it has an aluminum or stainless steel base, he says, you can be sure it’s a fake. (Buyers looking to acquire a questionable piece would do well to check with the Bertoia Foundation, which appraises and authenticates them.) While Wright acknowledges the preponderance of fakes, he is a bit more circumspect about the uneven market for the sprays. “They tend to be made of lesser materials,” he says, but more important, “when compared with Bertoia’s other works, the sprays are just not as interesting.”“Whenever we have a massive piece in excellent condition, you can be sure there will be a feeding frenzy,” says Meaghan Roddy of Phillips New York, which has tendered a number of Bertoia sculptures in recent years, including the meltcoated Golden Rods, 1959, which brought $521,000 in December 2013. This past December, the house sold a 3-foot-high Sonambient, circa 1970, estimated at $30,000 to $50,000 for the handsome sum of $134,500.“There is a refreshing beauty in Bertoia’s work in that it is not derivative of others,” says Jim Elkind. “He is finally getting his due, being recognized as an artist.A version of this article apprears in the February issue of Art+Auction.
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