HARRY BERTOIA | UNTITLED (CLOUD)

Acquired directly from the artist by the original owner, circa 1962

Thence by descent to the present owner

Nancy N. Schiffer and Val O. Bertoia, The World of Bertoia, Atglen, PA, 2003, pp. 87-88 (for related cloud sculptures)

Beverly H. Twitchell, Bertoia, New York, 2019, p. 157 (for a related cloud sculpture)

This lot is offered together with a certificate of authenticity from the Harry Bertoia Foundation, Bozeman, Montana.

Harry Bertoia’s abstract sculptures manifest his deeply spiritual contemplations of nature and the cosmos. His wire sculptures of the 1960s, such as the present lot, are among his most complex investigations of the universe. Intersecting wires are welded together, many terminating in square bronze elements, culminating in a dense mass of ordered chaos. While the sculpture’s delicate composition invites close inspection, its imposing stature demands distance to behold the vastness of its form in its entirety. In this work, it is as though Bertoia expresses both his longing for understanding of the universe as well as his reverence for its unfathomable mysteries. Bertoia explored these themes in related wire construction sculptures, such as Comet (1964) in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Art, and Sunlit Straw (1964), an installation at the Northwestern National Life Insurance Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The beauty and complexity of the present lot distinguish it as a masterwork within Bertoia’s prolific body of work.