Noguchi, Isamu

Noguchi, Isamu

(1904–88) sculptor; born in Los Angeles, Calif. He and his Japanese father and American mother moved to Japan (1906), but he returned to study in Indiana (1917) and was briefly apprenticed to Gutzon Borglum. He became a premedical student at Columbia University (1923), then studied sculpture (1924), was an assistant of Brancusi in Paris (1927–29), traveled to China and Japan, and settled in New York City (1932). He created ballet sets for Martha Graham (1935), designed furniture and public gardens, and was known for his organic abstract stone carvings, such as Even the Centipede (1952).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.