Happy Birthday to Isamu Noguchi who was born on this day in 1904.
Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) was one of the twentieth century’s most important and critically acclaimed sculptors. He created sculptures, gardens, furniture and lighting designs, ceramics, architecture, landscapes, and set designs with his own unique style of bold and modern aesthetics.
Noguchi was born in Los Angeles to Léonie Gilmour, a white American of mostly Irish descent born in Brooklyn, NY, and Yonejiro Noguchi, an influential Japanese writer of poetry, fiction, essays, and literary criticism in both English and Japanese. Noguchi moved to Japan with his mother at the age of two and lived there until the age of thirteen. In 1918, he returned alone to the United States to attend high school in Indiana. After high school, he moved to Connecticut and then to New York City to attend Columbia University, enrolling there as a premed student. He began taking evening sculpture classes at the Leonardo da Vinci School on the Lower East Side, and soon left the university to become a sculptor, supporting himself by making traditional portrait busts.
In 1926, Noguchi saw Constantin Brancusi’s work in an exhibition in New York. In 1927, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and went to Paris to work in Brancusi’s studio. This experience profoundly changed his artistic direction, turning Noguchi toward modernism and abstraction.
This photo of the artist is from circa 1926 before he left for Paris. It shows the young artist looking at his work, which depicts a female nude in a traditional way. This work was later destroyed.
During the WWII, Noguchi became a political activist and co-founded Nisei Writers and Artists Mobilization for Democracy. He voluntarily entered the Poston concentration camp in Arizona and remained there for six months. (Summarized from Noguchi.org website)
Undine [destroyed] Noguchi, Isamu, 1904-1988, American [artist] American 1926 HOLLIS number: olvwork240109 Image title: Photo with artist [ca.1926]
This image is part of FAL’s Digital Images and Slides Collection (DISC), a collection of images digitized from secondary sources for use in teaching and learning. FAL does not own the original artworks represented in this collection, but you can find more information at HOLLIS Images.
