Isamu Noguchi

Isamu Noguchi (1904-88), American sculptor, son of the poet Yone Noguchi, born in Los Angeles, and educated at Columbia University. In 1927-28 he worked in the Paris studio of the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi. He then traveled and studied in England, China, and Mexico. He won the national competition to decorate the Associated Press Building in Rockefeller Center, New York City, with a huge relief sculpture of stainless steel, executed in 1938. During his internment in a California camp for second-generation Japanese Americans during World War II, Noguchi continued to experiment with materials and forms. He also carved the graceful marble Kouros (1944-45, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City), an abstract interpretation of archaic Greek sculpture. After the war he designed stage sets and costumes for the modern dancers Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, and for George Balanchine's New York City Ballet. Noguchi's works characteristically present polished abstract forms that blend subtle Oriental respect for materials with the most refined sophistication of Western art. After 1950 his largest projects were outdoor spaces, designed on the aesthetic principles of Japanese gardens, in which large abstract sculptures were precisely sited to achieve balanced relationships between them, their defined space or garden, and the architecture surrounding them. Outstanding examples are the Garden of Peace (1956-58, UNESCO Building, Paris), the Water Garden (1964-65, Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza, New York City), the Billy Rose Art Garden (1965, Jerusalem), and the plaza in the Japanese section of Los Angeles (1983). He also devised a fountain for the Detroit Civic Center Plaza (1975) and an environmental sculpture group at the Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York. Throughout his career Noguchi also designed interior furnishings.