Isamu Noguchi

(possibly) New York, Eugene Schoen, 1929
Burlington, VT, Robert Hull Fleming Museum, UVM Collects, Sept. 12 - Dec. 15, 1991

This work is in very good condition. There is a slight evidence of rippling to the paper. There is a faint and unobrtusive evidence of paper discoloration along the edges. Framed under glass. Attached to backing with mylar pockets at corners.
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The present work is from a series known now as the 'Paris Abstractions'.  By his own account, Noguchi, as a young art student in New York, was powerfully affected by an exhibition of Brancusi sculpture he saw at the Brummer Gallery in 1926.  Shortly after, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship, with which he traveled to Paris in March 1927, to study there.  Within a few days of his arrival he was introduced to Brancusi who immediately apprenticed him to his studio.  This was to be the most powerful influence on his career. 
Noguchi remained in Paris for two years, until his funding expired and he returned 'from the magic land of France to the grim necessities of New York.'  During this period, he created a body of abstract gouaches and sculpture which laid the foundations for his future sculptural work.

Bruce Altshuler, former director of The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, created a census of known drawings from this Paris group, which he published in "Isamu Noguchi: Early Drawings from Paris and Beijing", Drawing, vol. XVI, no. 4, Nov.-Dec. 1994: he counts 63, of which 31 are in the collection of the Noguchi Foundation, 3 are in the Whitney Museum of American Art, and 28 are in a single private collection.  The present work is the other.

That article was published in connection with the first exhibition to explore this largely unknown aspect of the seminal phase of Noguchi's career, 'Isamu Noguchi: Early Abstraction', organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994-96.  In 2007 the Noguchi Museum held another exhibition, 'Survey of Paris Abstractions' (May 24 - Sept. 2) which included 29 of the gouaches from their collection.