ISAMU NOGUCHI
(AMERICAN 1904-1988)
UNDINE"
Inscribed on base "ISAMU © 1927" stamped "ROMAN BRONZE WORKS N-Y-", bronze, reddish brown and verdigris patinas
76 1/2 in. (194.3cm) (height)
PROVENANCE:
literature: "While completing high school in Indiana, Noguchi had his first experience with the profession of sculpture. In the summer of 1922 he traveled to Connecticut to join the studio entourage of Gutzon Borglum, an artist renowned for realistic portraits of famous persons, especially, later, the monumental presidential likenesses on Mount Rushmore. Although Borglum had no time for him, Noguchi learned from the other assistants and discovered his own talent for portraiture. He then enrolled at Columbia University in New York for premedical studies before deciding to become a sculptor - a decision supported by his mother, who had recently settled in New York. In a minor art school in a ramshackle building, Noguchi became the protégé of an Italian immigrant named Onorio Ruotolo, who showed him sophisticated academic techniques of drawing and modeling figures in clay and plaster. Many of his delicate pencil studies have classical names such as Passifae, placing Noguchi firmly in the European tradition based on classical Greco-Roman art and mythology. His life-size plaster statue of the water nymph Undine attests to Noguchi's remarkable mastery of idealized anatomy and pose. This kind of seductive nude- ostensibly erudite, but actually catering to prurient male audiences- had been popularized in France in the previous century and then migrated to America. Undine suggests that its maker had a healthy libido. This female image cannot be described as shy, passive, or modest; exuberant and titilating would be more accurate"
Text by Valerie J. Fletcher from Isamu Noguchi: Master Sculptor page 21, (London: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Scala Publishers) reproduced by permission of the publishers.
note: The original plaster incarnation of 'Undine (Nadja)' would have been created in the artist's New York studio at 127 University Place. It is generally accepted as the tour de force of Noguchi's early academic style, which he would later abandon following his embrace of modernism.
Unfortunately, no records of this casting of the subject work are extant within the Roman Bronze Works Archive as those covering the years 1920-1927 were destroyed in a fire at the foundry in the late Twenties. Noguchi is known, however, to have had castings done at the Roman Bronze Works until at least as late as 1932 and a plaster bust by him remained in their vault until as late as 1946.
We wish to thank Jonathan Frembling of the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas for his assistance in cataloguing this lot."

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