NOGUCHI
1904 – 1989
Isamu Noguchi was born in Los Angeles in 1904, the son of a Japanese father and an American mother. He lived in Japan until he was 14, when he moved to the United States.
He graduated high school in Indiana, after which he was offered a scholarship which allowed him to go to Paris to work as the assistant of the master of Modern sculpture, Costantin Brancusi.
Brancusi’s influence on the style of Noguchi is especially seen in his ethics, i.e. his honesty with materials, not giving forms that are in some way not suited to the nature of the different materials, the direct contact between man and the materials, and above all the need to be as one with what is happening.
His works were made of numerous materials such as iron, bronze, marble, cement, aluminum, paper and ceramics.
In the nineteen thirties he began to work on the idea, born of the social conscience of the years following the Depression, of making sculpture useful. This was later called the sculpture of spaces: deepening
the relationship between sculpture and its surrounding environment and creating a place for connection and social interaction, thanks to the study of the way in which forms, especially the human form, interact with the objects and the space containing them.
He worked as a scenographer for various companies, designing furniture and furnishings, especially the design of gardens.
He designed piazzas and sculptures for urban arrangements. At the Venice Biennale in 1986 he had a hall in the US pavilion.
He died in New York in 1988.
