Isamu NOGUCHI

Born in Los Angeles, Isamu Noguchi trained as a cabinet maker in Japan when he was thirteen. He returned to the USA in 1918. He assisted the director of the Leonardo Da Vinci Art School in New York. During the 1920’s and 1930’s, Noguchi was a maker of portraits busts. 1927-29, he was Constantin Brancusi’s assistant in Paris, where he met Alberto Giacometti. From 1932, Isamu Noguchi lived mainly in New York, where he was a sculptor. Noguchi designed a 1939 free-form glass-topped. There were other variations of this table by Noguchi, including the version (IN50) mass produced from 1944 by Herman Miller. Isamu Noguchi also designed ceramics produced in Japan. He married expressive biomorphic forms with Oriental elegance in his furniture designs. His sculpture gardens, including the example at the Bienecke Rare Book Library of Yale University, fused design, sculpture and architecture. His line of chochin-type lighting fixtures made of mulberry paper and spirally woven bamboo produced by Ozeki, Gifu, and called Akari. In the 1980’s, Isamu Noguchi established a museum in Long Island City, New York, to exhibit his work.