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HARRY BERTOIA (1915-1978)

BIO DEL ARTISTA CONSULTAR
 
<div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Harry Bertoia was an authentic visionary in art, and they are rare. Of those whose métier is sculpture, Alexander Calder and Harry Bertoia are the twentieth-century American standouts. They are engineers of beauty; their creative currency is feats of invention and pure artistry that honor our experience of them (if we are willing to quiet our mind) as if a sacred event. It was Duchamp who suggested Calder call his kinetic works “mobiles”, but it was up to Bertoia himself to coin a word to describe something for which there was little precedent. Visually precise, kinetic, and offering resonant, vibratory sound, a “Sonambient” sculpture is at once a metaphor for our sentient experience in the world yet capable of inducing an aura of transcendent experience. Given that insight, it is easy to understand Bertoia’s view that “I don’t hold onto terms like music and sculpture anymore. Those old distinctions have lost all their meaning.”</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>The present “Sonambient” sculpture is a forty-eight-inch-tall curtain of thin-gauged tines. Once activated, it becomes a 15 3/4 inch long, 8 inches deep wall of sound. Five rows of narrow tines are staggered in number, alternating between 30 and 29 tines that, when activated, present as an undulating wall of sound. When touched or moved by air currents, the rods produce a sound that, while metallic, does not betray its source of inspiration: the serene connection Bertoia felt in observing the gentle undulating movement of desert grasses. As always, this is a Bertoia sculpture that invites participation in the experience of changing shapes and sounds, a participatory work that asks us to be present in the moment, to connect across time with the object and its creator.</font></div>
<div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Harry Bertoia was an authentic visionary in art, and they are rare. Of those whose métier is sculpture, Alexander Calder and Harry Bertoia are the twentieth-century American standouts. They are engineers of beauty; their creative currency is feats of invention and pure artistry that honor our experience of them (if we are willing to quiet our mind) as if a sacred event. It was Duchamp who suggested Calder call his kinetic works “mobiles”, but it was up to Bertoia himself to coin a word to describe something for which there was little precedent. Visually precise, kinetic, and offering resonant, vibratory sound, a “Sonambient” sculpture is at once a metaphor for our sentient experience in the world yet capable of inducing an aura of transcendent experience. Given that insight, it is easy to understand Bertoia’s view that “I don’t hold onto terms like music and sculpture anymore. Those old distinctions have lost all their meaning.”</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>The present “Sonambient” sculpture is a forty-eight-inch-tall curtain of thin-gauged tines. Once activated, it becomes a 15 3/4 inch long, 8 inches deep wall of sound. Five rows of narrow tines are staggered in number, alternating between 30 and 29 tines that, when activated, present as an undulating wall of sound. When touched or moved by air currents, the rods produce a sound that, while metallic, does not betray its source of inspiration: the serene connection Bertoia felt in observing the gentle undulating movement of desert grasses. As always, this is a Bertoia sculpture that invites participation in the experience of changing shapes and sounds, a participatory work that asks us to be present in the moment, to connect across time with the object and its creator.</font></div> <div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Harry Bertoia was an authentic visionary in art, and they are rare. Of those whose métier is sculpture, Alexander Calder and Harry Bertoia are the twentieth-century American standouts. They are engineers of beauty; their creative currency is feats of invention and pure artistry that honor our experience of them (if we are willing to quiet our mind) as if a sacred event. It was Duchamp who suggested Calder call his kinetic works “mobiles”, but it was up to Bertoia himself to coin a word to describe something for which there was little precedent. Visually precise, kinetic, and offering resonant, vibratory sound, a “Sonambient” sculpture is at once a metaphor for our sentient experience in the world yet capable of inducing an aura of transcendent experience. Given that insight, it is easy to understand Bertoia’s view that “I don’t hold onto terms like music and sculpture anymore. Those old distinctions have lost all their meaning.”</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>The present “Sonambient” sculpture is a forty-eight-inch-tall curtain of thin-gauged tines. Once activated, it becomes a 15 3/4 inch long, 8 inches deep wall of sound. Five rows of narrow tines are staggered in number, alternating between 30 and 29 tines that, when activated, present as an undulating wall of sound. When touched or moved by air currents, the rods produce a sound that, while metallic, does not betray its source of inspiration: the serene connection Bertoia felt in observing the gentle undulating movement of desert grasses. As always, this is a Bertoia sculpture that invites participation in the experience of changing shapes and sounds, a participatory work that asks us to be present in the moment, to connect across time with the object and its creator.</font></div> <div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Harry Bertoia was an authentic visionary in art, and they are rare. Of those whose métier is sculpture, Alexander Calder and Harry Bertoia are the twentieth-century American standouts. They are engineers of beauty; their creative currency is feats of invention and pure artistry that honor our experience of them (if we are willing to quiet our mind) as if a sacred event. It was Duchamp who suggested Calder call his kinetic works “mobiles”, but it was up to Bertoia himself to coin a word to describe something for which there was little precedent. Visually precise, kinetic, and offering resonant, vibratory sound, a “Sonambient” sculpture is at once a metaphor for our sentient experience in the world yet capable of inducing an aura of transcendent experience. Given that insight, it is easy to understand Bertoia’s view that “I don’t hold onto terms like music and sculpture anymore. Those old distinctions have lost all their meaning.”</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>The present “Sonambient” sculpture is a forty-eight-inch-tall curtain of thin-gauged tines. Once activated, it becomes a 15 3/4 inch long, 8 inches deep wall of sound. Five rows of narrow tines are staggered in number, alternating between 30 and 29 tines that, when activated, present as an undulating wall of sound. When touched or moved by air currents, the rods produce a sound that, while metallic, does not betray its source of inspiration: the serene connection Bertoia felt in observing the gentle undulating movement of desert grasses. As always, this is a Bertoia sculpture that invites participation in the experience of changing shapes and sounds, a participatory work that asks us to be present in the moment, to connect across time with the object and its creator.</font></div> <div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Harry Bertoia was an authentic visionary in art, and they are rare. Of those whose métier is sculpture, Alexander Calder and Harry Bertoia are the twentieth-century American standouts. They are engineers of beauty; their creative currency is feats of invention and pure artistry that honor our experience of them (if we are willing to quiet our mind) as if a sacred event. It was Duchamp who suggested Calder call his kinetic works “mobiles”, but it was up to Bertoia himself to coin a word to describe something for which there was little precedent. Visually precise, kinetic, and offering resonant, vibratory sound, a “Sonambient” sculpture is at once a metaphor for our sentient experience in the world yet capable of inducing an aura of transcendent experience. Given that insight, it is easy to understand Bertoia’s view that “I don’t hold onto terms like music and sculpture anymore. Those old distinctions have lost all their meaning.”</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>The present “Sonambient” sculpture is a forty-eight-inch-tall curtain of thin-gauged tines. Once activated, it becomes a 15 3/4 inch long, 8 inches deep wall of sound. Five rows of narrow tines are staggered in number, alternating between 30 and 29 tines that, when activated, present as an undulating wall of sound. When touched or moved by air currents, the rods produce a sound that, while metallic, does not betray its source of inspiration: the serene connection Bertoia felt in observing the gentle undulating movement of desert grasses. As always, this is a Bertoia sculpture that invites participation in the experience of changing shapes and sounds, a participatory work that asks us to be present in the moment, to connect across time with the object and its creator.</font></div> <div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Harry Bertoia was an authentic visionary in art, and they are rare. Of those whose métier is sculpture, Alexander Calder and Harry Bertoia are the twentieth-century American standouts. They are engineers of beauty; their creative currency is feats of invention and pure artistry that honor our experience of them (if we are willing to quiet our mind) as if a sacred event. It was Duchamp who suggested Calder call his kinetic works “mobiles”, but it was up to Bertoia himself to coin a word to describe something for which there was little precedent. Visually precise, kinetic, and offering resonant, vibratory sound, a “Sonambient” sculpture is at once a metaphor for our sentient experience in the world yet capable of inducing an aura of transcendent experience. Given that insight, it is easy to understand Bertoia’s view that “I don’t hold onto terms like music and sculpture anymore. Those old distinctions have lost all their meaning.”</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>The present “Sonambient” sculpture is a forty-eight-inch-tall curtain of thin-gauged tines. Once activated, it becomes a 15 3/4 inch long, 8 inches deep wall of sound. Five rows of narrow tines are staggered in number, alternating between 30 and 29 tines that, when activated, present as an undulating wall of sound. When touched or moved by air currents, the rods produce a sound that, while metallic, does not betray its source of inspiration: the serene connection Bertoia felt in observing the gentle undulating movement of desert grasses. As always, this is a Bertoia sculpture that invites participation in the experience of changing shapes and sounds, a participatory work that asks us to be present in the moment, to connect across time with the object and its creator.</font></div> <div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Harry Bertoia was an authentic visionary in art, and they are rare. Of those whose métier is sculpture, Alexander Calder and Harry Bertoia are the twentieth-century American standouts. They are engineers of beauty; their creative currency is feats of invention and pure artistry that honor our experience of them (if we are willing to quiet our mind) as if a sacred event. It was Duchamp who suggested Calder call his kinetic works “mobiles”, but it was up to Bertoia himself to coin a word to describe something for which there was little precedent. Visually precise, kinetic, and offering resonant, vibratory sound, a “Sonambient” sculpture is at once a metaphor for our sentient experience in the world yet capable of inducing an aura of transcendent experience. Given that insight, it is easy to understand Bertoia’s view that “I don’t hold onto terms like music and sculpture anymore. Those old distinctions have lost all their meaning.”</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>The present “Sonambient” sculpture is a forty-eight-inch-tall curtain of thin-gauged tines. Once activated, it becomes a 15 3/4 inch long, 8 inches deep wall of sound. Five rows of narrow tines are staggered in number, alternating between 30 and 29 tines that, when activated, present as an undulating wall of sound. When touched or moved by air currents, the rods produce a sound that, while metallic, does not betray its source of inspiration: the serene connection Bertoia felt in observing the gentle undulating movement of desert grasses. As always, this is a Bertoia sculpture that invites participation in the experience of changing shapes and sounds, a participatory work that asks us to be present in the moment, to connect across time with the object and its creator.</font></div> <div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Harry Bertoia was an authentic visionary in art, and they are rare. Of those whose métier is sculpture, Alexander Calder and Harry Bertoia are the twentieth-century American standouts. They are engineers of beauty; their creative currency is feats of invention and pure artistry that honor our experience of them (if we are willing to quiet our mind) as if a sacred event. It was Duchamp who suggested Calder call his kinetic works “mobiles”, but it was up to Bertoia himself to coin a word to describe something for which there was little precedent. Visually precise, kinetic, and offering resonant, vibratory sound, a “Sonambient” sculpture is at once a metaphor for our sentient experience in the world yet capable of inducing an aura of transcendent experience. Given that insight, it is easy to understand Bertoia’s view that “I don’t hold onto terms like music and sculpture anymore. Those old distinctions have lost all their meaning.”</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>The present “Sonambient” sculpture is a forty-eight-inch-tall curtain of thin-gauged tines. Once activated, it becomes a 15 3/4 inch long, 8 inches deep wall of sound. Five rows of narrow tines are staggered in number, alternating between 30 and 29 tines that, when activated, present as an undulating wall of sound. When touched or moved by air currents, the rods produce a sound that, while metallic, does not betray its source of inspiration: the serene connection Bertoia felt in observing the gentle undulating movement of desert grasses. As always, this is a Bertoia sculpture that invites participation in the experience of changing shapes and sounds, a participatory work that asks us to be present in the moment, to connect across time with the object and its creator.</font></div>
Sin título (Escultura sonora)c. 197048 x 15 3/4 x 8 in.(121,92 x 40,01 x 20,32 cm) varillas de berilio y cobre con base de latón
Procedencia
Colección privada
Harry Bertoia fue un auténtico visionario del arte, y son pocos. De entre aquellos cuyo métier es la escultura, Alexander Calder y Harry Bertoia son los norteamericanos más destacados del siglo XX. Son ingenieros de la belleza; su divisa creativa son proezas de invención y arte puro que honran nuestra experiencia de ellas (si estamos dispuestos a aquietar nuestra mente) como si de un acontecimiento sagrado se tratara. Fue Duchamp quien sugirió a Calder que llamara "móviles" a sus obras cinéticas, pero le correspondió al propio Bertoia acuñar una palabra para describir algo para lo que había pocos precedentes. Visualmente precisa, cinética y con un sonido resonante y vibratorio, una escultura "Sonambient" es a la vez una metáfora de nuestra experiencia sensible en el mundo y capaz de inducir un aura de experiencia trascendente. Con esta idea, es fácil comprender la opinión de Bertoia: "Ya no me aferro a términos como música y escultura. Esas viejas distinciones han perdido todo su significado".





La actual escultura "Sonambient" es una cortina de púas finas de cuarenta y ocho pulgadas de alto. Una vez activada, se convierte en un muro de sonido de 15 3/4 pulgadas de largo y 8 pulgadas de profundidad. Cinco filas de púas estrechas se escalonan en número, alternando entre 30 y 29 púas que, al activarse, se presentan como un muro ondulante de sonido. Al tocarlas o moverlas con las corrientes de aire, las varillas producen un sonido que, aunque metálico, no traiciona su fuente de inspiración: la serena conexión que Bertoia sintió al observar el suave movimiento ondulante de las hierbas del desierto. Como siempre, se trata de una escultura Bertoia que invita a participar en la experiencia de formas y sonidos cambiantes, una obra participativa que nos pide estar presentes en el momento, conectar a través del tiempo con el objeto y su creador.
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