Harry Bertoia (March 10, 1915 – November 6, 1978[1]) was an Italian-born American artist, sound art sculptor, and modern furniture designer.

At age 15, given the opportunity to move to Detroit, Harry chose to adventure to America and live with his older brother, Oreste.

The following year in 1937 he received a scholarship to study at the Cranbrook Academy of Art where he encountered Walter Gropius, Edmund N. Bacon, Ray and Charles Eames, and Florence Knoll for the first time.

It will be accessible to scholars, educators, collectors, arts professionals, and any member of the public wishing to gain a deeper understanding of Bertoia's work.

Still at Cranbrook, in 1943 he married Brigitta Valentiner, and then moved to California to work for Charles and Ray at the Molded Plywood Division of the Evans Product Company.

Bertoia also learned welding techniques at Santa Monica College and began experimenting with sound sculptures.

The chairs were produced with varying degrees of upholstery over their light grid-work, and they were handmade at first because a suitable mass production process could not be found.

Bertoia played the pieces in a number of concerts and even produced a series of eleven albums, all entitled "Sonambient,"[5] of the music made by his art, manipulated by his hands along with the elements of nature.

In the late 1990s, his daughter found a large collection of near mint condition original albums stored away on his property in Pennsylvania.

The 1954 Gordon Bunshaft building for Manufacturer's Hanover Trust-now JPMorgan Chase (510 Fifth Avenue at West 43rd Street, New York City) included a full building-width, second-floor screen-sculpture by Bertoia.

The building, located in the Chacao Municipality (former Sucre District), now serves as the headquarters of Venezuela's Ministry of the People's Power for Tourism, while the embassy was moved to a bigger site in Valle Arriba in 1995.

Seven feet in diameter, the spherical sculpture consists of 675 gold-plated stainless steel branches and hangs in the building's lobby.

[10] Bertoia died of lung cancer in Barto, Pennsylvania, at the age of 63 on November 6, 1978 and is buried underneath one of the sculptural gongs he created.