New York and Buckminster Fuller (1929-1930)

When Noguchi returned from Paris in the spring of 1929 he exhibited his new abstract sculptures at the Eugene Schoen Gallery, but no work sold. Discouraged at this commercial failure, he rejected abstraction and returned to his academic skill of portrait sculpture. He sculpted heads of the wealthy for income, but also made portraits of artists and other friends. In 1929 Noguchi did two portraits of dancer Martha Graham, a new acquaintance for whom he eventually would design more than twenty stage sets. That year he also met the visionary inventor R. Buckminster Fuller, with whom he developed a close friendship. Noguchi exhibited his portrait heads at the Marie Sterner Gallery in February 1930, and then traveled with Fuller on a lecture tour to Cambridge, Massachusetts and Chicago. The funds that Noguchi raised through portrait sculpture commissions enabled him to return to Paris in April 1930, and then to set off for China and Japan.

Noguchi on rejecting abstraction  |  Chronology