 Isamu NoguchiA prominent Japanese-American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known widely for his sculpture and public works, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several mass-produced lamps and furniture pieces; some of which are still manufactured and sold today.
Among his designer furniture work was his collaboration with the Herman Miller company in 1948 when he joined George Nelson, Paul László and Charles Eames to produce a catalogue of what is often considered to be the most in uential body of retro furniture.
Isamu Noguchi (pronounced as: sämoo nogooch) was a sculptor, designer, architect, and a craftsman. Through sculpture and architecture Noguchi believed a better understanding of our struggle with nature could be achieved.
"Everything is sculpture," said Isamu Noguchi. "Any material, any idea without hindrance born into space, I consider sculpture."
Noguchi believed the sculptor's task was to shape space, to give it order and meaning, and that art should "disappear," or be as one with its surroundings.
Unwilling to be pigeonholed, Noguchi created sculptures that could be as abstract as Henri Moore's or as realistic as Leonardo's. He used any medium he could get his hands on: stone, metal, wood, clay, bone, paper, or a mixture of any or all: carving, casting, cutting, pounding, chiseling, or dynamiting away as each form took shape.
"To limit yourself to a particular style may make you an expert of that particular viewpoint or school, but I do not wish to belong to any school," he said. "I am always learning, always discovering." |
