Isamu Noguchi

Object Details

Exhibition Label

Isamu Noguchi garnered international acclaim as a versatile sculptor who created evocative works in media ranging from stone and steel to clay and paper. The son of a Japanese father and an American mother, Noguchi addressed his dual ethnicity through art that was informed by both Eastern and Western aesthetic traditions. He embraced abstraction in response to the pure forms of modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi, but until the early 1940s, Noguchi was best known for his figurative portrait sculpture. In 1935 he created the first of many striking stage sets for dancer-choreographer Martha Graham and later produced a mammoth stainless steel relief for the Associated Press Building in Rockefeller Center (1938). During World War II, Noguchi spent six months in a Japanese American relocation camp. In the postwar period, his work grew to include landscape design, while his sculpture ranged from the monumental to delicate, lantern-like forms.”

Data Source

National Portrait Gallery

Artist

Yousuf Karsh, 23 Dec 1908 - 13 Jul 2002

Sitter

Isamu Noguchi, 17 Nov 1904 - 30 Dec 1988

Date

1980

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Estrellita Karsh in memory of Yousuf Karsh

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Dimensions

Image: 28 × 21.6 cm (11 × 8 1/2")

Sheet: 35.3 × 27.6 cm (13 7/8 × 10 7/8")

Mount: 40.7 × 33 cm (16 × 13")

Mat (Karsh exhibit): 55.9 × 40.6 cm (22 × 16")

Type

Photograph