Designer and Pioneer. How does Noguchi
has reshaped the design of the 20th century
Made in conjunction with four different institutions, one in the UK, in Germany, in France and in Switzerland, the show of the Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi is mind blowing. Due to the current renovation of his museum in New-York, the current museum decided, with a team of European curators to showcase his works, rarely seen in European museums and public collection.
Isamu Noguchi, which was born in Los Angeles on November 17, 1904, is the son of the American writer Léonie Gilmour and the Japanese poet Yonejirō Noguchi. The couple and Isamu returned shortly in Japan after the birth of Noguchi. They immediately took him to the opposite side of the globe, and he had a normal childhood in Tokyo and his surrounding.
During that time, one of the most important events of his life might happen, he learns Japanese woodworking techniques while the family was building their new house.
After the aftermath of the first world war, the young student traveled alone to the United States to attend the Rolling Prairie School and the La Porte in Indiana. And after his successful graduation, he was planning to begin his premedical studies at the Columbia University in New York.
During the long summer break of 1922, and while moving to New York, he made an apprenticeship with the sculptor Gutzon Borglum in Connecticut. This eye opening experience will lead him to become a sculpture and start his studies with Onorio Ruotolo at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School.
Due to his final study, he had a chance to enrol into a fellowship trip to Paris and East Asia. During his arrival in Europe, he works as an assistant in the studio of Constantin Brâncuşi. This will be another highlight of his career.
After coming back to New-York, he works a bit in New-York with his mother before turning his back to the US to go back to Paris, Moscow and China. This trip will mainly focus on the studies of traditional brush drawing with Qi Baish, who'll lead him to come back to Japan to study his second culture, his origin and himself.
A few years before the Second World War, the artist and designer turn itself into industrial design and playground concept. Most of those design we're largely unrealised, but Noguchi will always make the person and the public at the center of his action, with artworks in the center of public square, in the halls of buildings, etc.
When the Second World War started out in Europe and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the artist became more and more active, political and creatively, he entered into the incarceration camp in Poston, Arizona, in the hopes of improving living conditions there and create affordable design for ALL.
On this behalf, his first light will be created, and the artist will experiment with many materials such as plastic, concrete and wood. This will lead (after the war), to have a grant to research the history of sculpture in public and spiritual settings and journeys to France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Greece, Egypt, India, Indonesia, and in 1950 to Japan.
A year later, his experimentation will be flourished in the Akari light sculptures, one of his most iconic work. This will propels him as a stage designer for the sets of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the design of the garden for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris and a selection of his works at the documenta II in Kassel in 1959.
But his home will always be New-York. He set up a new studio and residence in Long Island City, in 1961. He will be awarded, by a first retrospective at the Whitney Museum, New York in 1968, and another exhibition, Noguchi: Sculptor as Designer is held at MoMA in 1978 and will travel the whole country.
His last statement before his death in 1988 will be his participation to the 42nd Venice Biennale, when he represented the United States.
NOW, the exhibition is showcasing all of those stories in many chapters. The scenography, which is quite light and open start and finish with his portrait, self-portraits but mostly portraits of person, relation to the important of human in his works.
With his interdisciplinary work, the artist brings together designer and art in a new way. Mostly know in Japan, the exhibition she lights on an industrial designer who redefines, constantly his practice, his life, his traditions and the traditions of his two countries, Japan and the USA.
His varied body of work is marked by a search for the connection between art and life: among other things he made stage sets, light objects, furniture, pubic gardens and playgrounds, while being inspired by past and contemporary cultures: Japanese gardens, astronomic observatories in India or the abstract art of Surrealism.
The ten sections of the show are showcasing his works as a master, the recognition he deserved.
Informations about the exhibition
Place: Zentrum Paul Klee
Date: 23.9.2022 – 8.1.2023
Curators: Fabienne Eggelhöfer and Myriam Dössegger
Ticket: Available on the website of the Zentrum Paul Klee OR at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the Zentrum Paul Klee
Zentrum Paul Klee
Monument im Fruchtland 3
CH-3001 Bern
Phone: +41 31 359 01 01
Fax: +41 31 359 01 02
Mail: info@zpk.org