Important Design

Important Design

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 469. Untitled (Multi-Plane Construction).

Property of a New York Collector

Harry Bertoia

Untitled (Multi-Plane Construction)

Auction Closed

June 9, 06:24 PM GMT

Estimate

120,000 - 180,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property of a New York Collector

Harry Bertoia

Untitled (Multi-Plane Construction)


circa 1959

nickel alloy-coated steel

67 x 24¼ x 16¼ in. (170.2 x 61.6 x 41.3 cm)

Acquired directly from the artist by Fairweather Hardin Gallery, Chicago, 1959
Private Collection, Baltimore, 1960
Private Collection, Maine
Sotheby’s New York, May 11, 2005, lot 157
Acquired from the above by the present owner
This lot is offered together with a certificate of authenticity from the Harry Bertoia Foundation, St. George, Utah.

Sculpture was the means by which artist Harry Bertoia expressed his contemplation of nature, spirituality and the cosmos. Embracing the boundlessness and mystery inherent in these themes and concepts, Bertoia permitted interpretation and poetic ambiguity even in the presentation of his works, encouraging the collector to display his sculpture the way it resonated with them most. Nature was not only Harry Bertoia’s greatest inspiration and muse, it played an active role in the presentation of his work. He saw no contradiction between the hardness of metal, his preferred medium, and the lushness of the natural world. By displaying many of his sculptures outdoors, his abstract, metallic interpretations of nature became integrated with the landscape through their interaction with the elements. His wire and multi-plane sculptures of the 1960s such as the present lot, an impressively large example of the form, are among his most complex investigations of the universe. Intersecting wires incorporating square elements are welded together, 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. The beauty and complexity of the present lot distinguish it as a masterwork within Bertoia’s prolific body of work.