LONG ISLAND CITY, NY.- Isamu Noguchi’s seminal full-figure sculpture Undine (Nadja) is on view for the first time since 1927 in The Full Figure and Portraiture, 1926–1941, a special exhibition at The Noguchi Museum. The 1926 work, the only full-figure sculpture by the artist known to still exist, reveals the young Noguchi’s mastery of traditional form. A bronze version of Undine is accompanied and illuminated in the exhibition by a selection of thirteen portrait busts from the following fifteen years. Together, these demonstrate Noguchi’s efforts to expand the parameters of traditional form and to define himself as a sculptor. The exhibition is on view through February 15, 2009.

In 1924, while a pre-medical student at Columbia University, Isamu Noguchi was encouraged by his mother to take an evening class with sculptor Onorio Ruotolo at the Leonardo da Vinci School of Art on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Thus trained as a figurative sculptor, Noguchi achieved immediate notice, holding his first exhibition at the school within three months of enrolling and exhibiting his work at the National Academy of Design and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts over the next three years. In his own studio, at 127 University Place, in New York City, Noguchi modeled figures in clay and plaster, including Undine (Nadja), a tour de force of his academic style.

Noguchi’s talent as an academic figurative sculptor earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship that led to a 1927 apprenticeship with Constantin Brancusi in Paris. While his work with Brancusi led Noguchi to embrace the avant-garde, he continued to employ his academic skills during the 1930s, supporting himself by making portrait heads like those included in the exhibition.

Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) was one of the most critically acclaimed sculptors of the twentieth century. Through a lifetime of artistic experimentation, he created sculpture, gardens, furniture, lighting and interior designs, ceramics, architecture, and set designs. His work, at once subtle and bold, traditional and modern, set a new standard for artistic achievement. An internationalist, Noguchi traveled extensively throughout his life. (In his later years he maintained studios both in Japan and New York.) He discovered the impact of large-scale public works in Mexico, earthy ceramics and tranquil gardens in Japan, subtle ink-brush techniques in China, and the purity of marble in Italy. Noguchi collaborated with artists and thinkers in a range of disciplines. Besides Fuller, he worked closely with architects Gordon Bunshaft and Louis Kahn and dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, among others.