Isamu Noguchi, 1966-1988

Here in the caption copyI met Isamu in 1966/67 when I was invited to work at The Officina Cidionio and developed a relationship that was to last 22 years. The Officina was a place for carvers in Pietrasanta. Access was only by invitation; there I also met Moore, Arp, who came to have their plaster maquettes enlarged by the two men employed by Cidonio for that purpose.

Isamu and I lived and worked at The Officina for long periods of time, we became good friends. At the time, he was experimenting by intersecting various types and colors of stones in his carvings. 

I was the youngest of the distinguished group, Isamu was 24 years my senior and very much enjoyed my work and presence. Whenever I was not there, he wrote to me that: “he missed my energy, watching me at work made him feel good” . He lived in a small house called “The Isamu House” that Cidonio had built Japanese style especially for him. Isamu had been the assistant of Brancusi while in Paris on a Guggenheim Grant. 

Priscilla Morgan was a person that promoted business in USA and worldwide for Isamu. She practically spent all her life taking care of him, hoping that one day she could become Mrs. Noguchi. He behaved very selfishly in her respect, did not talk nicely about her, yet he used her work. Isamu had helped financially a young man so that he would study and become an architect. He later hired him to work in his studio. I do hope that today they have not destroyed Isamu’s wonderful studio by making too many changes while doing a disaster, thus eliminating his strong presence and dust. This is what happened when moving the Brancusi studio to the Centre Pompidou. Brancusi’s soul was lost.  

While working at The Officina, I still had my studio in Rome • Palazzo Patrizi • Via Margutta, where Isamu came to visit with the two Cidonio’s stone cutters and their wives, Moreno, Enzino, Eda.  

We used to joke all the time, about who had made more “heads”. When he walked in, my four-storey high studio in Rome, he looked way up where some of the plaster heads, were lined up on shelves. They were the plasters, which had been cast in bronze.

 “Oh yes, he admitted, you did more than I!!”.

At the time, I also had my first studio in New York at 414 East 75^th, where he visited me on several occasions, while he had his first studio in Long Island. 

I loved his place, much admired his work together with all the great equipment. I thought that the room where he slept, Japanese style on his “tatami”, was particularly beautiful. 

Looking at all his tools, I was hoping that some day, I could also afford to have them. 

We always went visiting the galleries and museums; sometimes he would generously surprise me with a book that I liked, as a gift. I still preserve some of the little gifts, which he brought me back from his trips in India, and Japan. The small pillow was from India, the bronze buckle for a belt from Japan. He kept visiting a factory across the street from his studio in Long Island. He wanted to purchase it, but was concerned for all the work needed and the financial aspect. 

One day, some time in the 80s, he mentioned that a gallery called Pace, that had just started in New York, after purchasing the Nevelson building with all her work inside, had proposed to have an exhibit of his work. He was very doubtful about accepting, for like me, he wanted to stay away from dealers. I suggested that he should do it, but have them purchase three or four sculptures, as part of the deal. With that money, he could purchase and start work on the factory, across the street from his studio in Long Island. 

I remember the astonished look on his face: “ You are so right ! Why didn’t I think about it ? It is some great advice, that’s what I will do”.  He did. He hired an assistant: Walter Dusenburry,  to help him produce in a yard nearby New York, some of his stainless – steel sculptures and inaugurated his exhibition at Pace in 1983. 

Priscilla Morgan, present at the opening, was telling everybody how much work he had already sold. 

Isamu also had an apartment at: 333 East 69^th St. in Manhattan. One morning, he called me to ask if he could pick me up and we would go to see something that made him furious. He was really beside himself with anger. We went downtown, to where he had produced this beautiful, recessed, Japanese style garden, in front of the Chase Manhattan Bank. He was always hoping that soon he would be making a monumental sculpture for that plaza. 

Instead, they had just installed a Dubuffet.  He was appalled. 

When making this recessed garden, he had imported all the boulders from Japan and had worked not charging anything. 

He was in such pain; I tried to console him, get him away from there. 

We went to lunch and to our usual, galleries’ visit. But he was in pain the whole time. The Dubuffet sculpture, looked like something had been thrown against the building. We called it: “Scrambled Eggs”. 

In 1985, he inaugurated his Noguchi’s Garden Museum in Long Island. As Henry Geldzahler had told me during his visit at my studio in New York, he organized the exhibit of Isamu at the Venice Biennale, to represent the United States. We continued to work at the Officina Cidonio long after its closure in 1972/73. We had many sculptures to complete before we could move out. 

In the last crating and shipment of my work to New York, Isamu asked me to also include some of his sculptures. 

He continued to come every year to Pietrasanta, he asked me on several occasions if he could come to work at my place while this old olive mill was undergoing construction. After what had happened with Isamu enlarging one of my sculptures, I did not feel it was the right thing to do.  Knowing Isamu, my olive mill would soon become his studio. 

He invited me to go and spend some time at his stone yard in Japan on the island of Shikoku, at the time I could not get away from all the work for the restoration of my mill. My finances were all invested in this enterprise. 

He continued to come to Pietrasanta. Giorgio, one of Cidonio’s stone cutters, provided a room upstairs from his working place (a farmland that Giorgio’s father had provided) so that Isamu could live and work there. It was during his last trip there that he caught a very bad flu. He urgently went back to New York, but his illness deteriorated to pneumonia; he was moved to the intensive care of the hospital where he died. It was some time in December 1988.

I was very sad to loose a long-time friend that admired my work, he always repeated that women sculptors would be the greatest in the coming years, also he would always tell me that : “ I should not allow for anything to interfere ” . 

This was impossible for me, for I had a son and a husband, a family I loved. I will always remember Priscilla’s comment : “ Anyway, he died with me ”.  Priscilla continued to be in charge of Isamu’s studio and to make sure that the proper people were running the beautiful museum he had created. 

In the beginning of 2005, in some Art magazine, I have seen photographs of Noguchi’s studio after having been restructured.  From these photos, I see a total destruction, all that is visible are some huge windows, nothing like it was and well remember. 

In my Working Place • Sculpture Garden I enjoy a collection of his beautiful Akari lamps. He always brought me one as a gift whenever he came to visit. I have done some restoration to one of them, as the paper did not hold out too well. It was made over 40 years ago: marked number one and I still preserve it with much care.