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		Isamu Noguchi USA 1904-1988


	Renown as a Sculptor, Isamu Noguchi was a designer of interiors and furniture, architect and craftsman who encouraged the sculptural qualities of American modern design. He was truly one of the great sculptors of the 20th century, and was known for his "lived spaces" for the theater, interiors, gardens and playgrounds. He also sought to bring sculptural qualities to the many objects he designed for common use. Isamu was born in Los Angeles, the son of a Japanese poet and an Irish American writer. He received training as a cabinet maker in Japan before enrolling in medical school at Columbia University. His love of sculpture, however, drew him to evening classes in sculpture, and eventually gave up medical school for a full time pursuit in the arts. Awarded with a Guggenheim Fellowship, he had the great good fortune to be apprenticed in the studio of Constantin Brancusi in Paris, whose investigations of form and space recalled the art and architecture Noguchi knew from childhood years spent in Japan. Upon returning to America, Noguchi allied himself with some of those who would become the mainstays of modern, Charles Eames, George Nelson, Buckminster Fuller. Drawing inspiration for his Japanese roots and Mother Nature, Noguchi's work sought always to resolve life and aesthetic practice, the art object and the utensil, just as he sought to reveal the essential unity of form and space. Among his visually seductive organic forms is his famous IN-50 coffee table designed for Herman Miller in 1944, just one of many designs for the furniture company.