Beschreibung:

PROPERTY OF A WEST COAST COLLECTOR Harry Bertoia "Golden Rods" melt-coated wire sculpture circa 1959 Brass-covered steel, phosphor bronze. 49 1/4 x 73 x 8 3/4 in. (125.1 x 185.4 x 22.2 cm) Together with the original invoice from Fairweather-Hardin Gallery, Chicago.
Provenance Fairweather-Hardin Gallery, Chicago Mr. and Mrs. Patrick B. McGinnis, Boston, December 15, 1959 Michael Lowe Gallery, Cincinnati, 1997 Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Nancy N. Schiffer and Val O. Bertoia, The World of Bertoia, Atglen, 2003, p. 150 June Kompass Nelson, Harry Bertoia Sculptor, Detroit, 1970, p. 96, fig. 58 for a similar example Catalogue Essay Harry Bertoia’s longstanding Chicago representatives, Sally Fairweather and Shirley Hardin held six solo exhibitions for the artist from 1956 until 1984 at Fairweather-Hardin, their pioneering contemporary art gallery on East Ontario Street, although the two had shown individual works by Bertoia from 1947, near the beginning of his career and theirs. Fairweather-Hardin invoiced the present lot to Lucille McGinnis, resident of Boston’s Ritz Carlton, in December 1959; payment followed in spring from the desk of her husband, Patrick B. McGinnis, then president of the Boston and Maine Railroad. A controversial figure up and down the line from Pugwash to Penn, McGinnis once held brief tenure of the New Haven Railroad, where in lieu of track improvements he introduced experimental lightweight trains from Boston to New York and, at the urging of his wife, hired Yale photography professor Herbert Matter to design the railroad’s noted slab serif logo, which remains in service along the Northeast Corridor on certain hand-me-down locomotives. Mr. and Mrs. McGinnis exhibited a portion of their wide ranging collection, which included other works by Bertoia as well as kinetic sculptor George Rickey at the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts from October to December 1960. Read More