Isamu Noguchi was born in Los Angeles in 1904, of an American mother and a Japanese father. He lived in Japan till his 13th birthday then moved to Indiana. As a student at Columbia University, he attended sculpture evening class with Onorio Ruotolo. He quickly left university to become an academic sculptor.] In 1926, Noguchi went to the Constantin Brancusi show in New York, which deeply modified his artistic vision. With the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship he went to Paris and worked from 1927 to 1929 at Brancusi’s studio. In 1942, Noguchi settled his studio in Greenwich Village in New York after travelling to Asia, Mexico and Europe. After the war, Noguchi spent a lot of time in Japan. In the 60s, he began to learn how to work stones with Masatoshi Izumi on Shikoku Island. In 1937, he designed an intercom in Bakélite for the Zenith Radio Corporation and in 1947 Herman Miller produced his glass table. In 1985, Noguchi opened The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum (now known as the Noguchi Museum), in Long Island. The first Noguchi retrospective in USA occurred in 1968 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In 1986 he represented USA at the Venice Biennale. He died in 1988.