“Untitled” (America) | Art & Artists

Born in Los Angeles, Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) spent much of his childhood in Japan and later maintained studios in New York and in Mure, Japan. As a young sculptor, he traveled extensively throughout Asia, Europe, and Mexico, absorbing various methods of working in ceramics, wood, stone, and metal. During an extended stay in Paris in 1927, Noguchi worked as a studio assistant for Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876–1957) and met fellow American sculptor Alexander Calder (1898–1976), both of whom encouraged his shift away from academic realism toward abstraction. He channeled these disparate influences into a singular, modernist aesthetic that inspired his interdisciplinary practice, which includes furniture, landscape, and stage design. 

The sculptures on view show Noguchi’s broad explorations in form and materials from the 1930s to 1950s. “Everything I do has an element of engineering in it,” Noguchi once said, “particularly since I dislike gluing parts together or taking advantage of something that is not inherent in the material.” In Integral (1959), a marble plinth balances on sheets of metal and wood, while the interlocking carved pieces in The Gunas (1946) and Humpty Dumpty (1946) rely solely on their own weight to anchor them. Noguchi also expressed his reverence for materials by showcasing their distinctive qualities, from the chalky, pale orange surface of earthenware in The Queen (1931/c. 1943) to the smooth, purplish-brown sheen of cast iron in Endless Coupling (1957).