ISAMU NOGUCHI: WHAT IS SCULPTURE?
Alanna Heiss [preface], Henry Geldzahler
Alanna Heiss [preface], Henry Geldzahler: ISAMU NOGUCHI: WHAT IS SCULPTURE? New York and Venice: P. S. 1 and the Venice Biennale, 1986. First edition. Slim quarto. Parallel text in English and Italian. Printed wrappers in Publishers decorated glassine jacket. 48 pp. Illustrated in color and black and white. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print. Light edgewear, but a nearly fine copy.
8.75 x 9.25 soft cover book with 48 pages illustrated in color and black and white. Published in conjunction with the 42nd Venice Biennale, June 29 – September 28, 1986.
Isamu Noguchi [1904 - 1988] was among the most influential sculptors of the twentieth century. Noguchi was born in Los Angeles to an Irish-American teacher and editor and a Japanese poet. He was raised in Japan until, at age 18, he was sent back to the United States to study. In 1926 Noguchi won one of the first Guggenheim fellowships and traveled to Paris, where he worked for six months as a studio assistant to sculptor Constantin Brancusi. In addition to his sculptural work, he created furniture and lighting for the Herman Miller Company, designed sets for choreographers Martha Graham and George Balanchine and collaborated with architect Louis I. Kahn.
"In my long experience as an intimate witness of Noguchi’s work, I believe that whatever the external entities of his coordinate translating may be, they represent a faithful manifest of the intellectual and harmonic being, Noguchi. In my estimation, the evoluting array and extraordinary breadth of his conceptioning realizations document a comprehensive artist without peer in our time."– R. Buckminster Fuller