Greece

As a child Isamu Noguchi was told the ancient Greek myths by his mother, and in later life he spent much time in this country that had fascinated him in his youth. Noguchi first traveled to Greece in 1949 on a Bollingen Foundation grant to study what he called "environments of leisure", and he visited Athens, Delphi, Olympia, Mycenae, Epidaurus and Crete. During the next two decades he regularly stopped in Greece en route between Japan and America, where he worked on white marble sculptures that were shipped unfinished to New York. When his new aluminum works were rejected for his 1959 Stable Gallery exhibition, Noguchi completed his Greek marble sculptures to create a body of work honoring his early teacher Constantin Brancusi.

Noguchi on bent aluminum sculptures  |  Noguchi  on Stable Gallery Exhibition