At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism

May 7, 2022–Feb 26, 2023

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Born 1904 in Los Angeles, CA
Died 1988 in New York, NY

Isamu Noguchi received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1927 to study stone and wood carving in Paris and travel through Asia. He felt these experiences would help him become “an interpreter of the East to the West,” a goal that reflected his Japanese and American ancestry and childhood spent between Japan and the United States. Once in France he assisted sculptor Constantin Brancusi, who inspired him to create abstract artworks, beginning with a series of black-and-white gouaches—including Paris Abstraction—which he executed shortly after concluding his apprenticeship. These drawings, which Noguchi called “studies in a sculptural outline,” led to his first abstract sculptures, for which he would become world-renowned.