The Seed is a rare and exquisite example of a small-scale interlocking sculpture by Isamu Noguchi, whose supreme command of traditional sculptural techniques together with his unique pictorial vocabulary gave rise to some of the 20^th century’s most iconic works of art and design. The Seed belongs to a highly innovative series of interlocking sculptures conceived by Noguchi between 1943 and 1947 that explore space, material and form. The series, which includes several of Noguchi’s most celebrated works, among them, Kouros, Avatar, Humpty Dumpty, Strange Bird; and Statue, cemented his reputation as one of America’s most significant and influential modern artists.
Isamu Noguchi
The Seed, 1946 (cast 1974)
Bronze, gold patina
30.5 x 54.6 x 35.6 cm | 12 x 21 1/2 x 14 in.
Edition of 8 and 2 APs
Signed and numbered ‘Isamu Noguchi / 4/8’ with the Fonderia D'Arte Tesconi, Pietrasanta stamp (lower edge of triangular central element)

See more artwork images and provenance
Listen: Glenn Adamson,
Curator and Author,
former Director of the Museum of Arts and Design
on the symbolical and material systems through which Noguchi designed The Seed
(duration 10:21)
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Isamu Noguchi

The Seed

1946

The Noguchi Museum Archives. © INFGM / ARS, NY. Photo: Kevin Noble

Conceived in Italian marble in 1946 and fabricated in bronze in 1974, this sculpture is one of only two bronzes finished with a gold patina from an edition of eight cast between 1972 and 1988. It is formed of three curvilinear plates that intersect, creating a connective arabesque that works with gravity to hold the structure together without the need of nails, glue or welding. The work is testament to Noguchi’s engineering prowess, as well as his ability to convey beauty through sheer simplicity and perfection of line.
‘The essence of sculpture is for me the perception of space, [it is] the continuum of our existence...’
Isamu Noguchi
Isamu Noguchi in his MacDougal Alley studio, Greenwich Village, 1946. The Noguchi Museum Archives. © INFGM / ARS, NY. Photo: Eliot Elisofon

The artist embarked on his seminal series of interlocking sculptures in 1943, following his return to New York in late 1942 after a six-month period of (initially voluntary) incarceration in an Arizona concentration camp for Japanese Americans. In his Greenwich Village studio, he carved the pieces of each interlocking sculpture from fragile sheets of marble, slate or wood, before slotting them together to form balanced structures set at right angles for support. As he said: ‘The very limitations of the medium imposed a kind of honesty; to find the minimum means for construction and expression rather than the myriad possibilities that metal welding soon came to involve […] I took peculiar satisfaction in its fragility, arguing the essential impermanence of life, much as in a Japanese poem. Like cherry blossoms, perfection could only be transient – a fragile beauty is more poignant.’
‘...All dimensions are but measures of it, as in relative perspective of our vision lay volume, line, point, giving shape, distance, proportion...’
Isamu Noguchi
The interlocking sculptures signal Noguchi's return to Surrealist-inspired abstract, biomorphic forms, which draw on the work of contemporaries like Yves Tanguy, Alberto Giacometti, and Arshile Gorky. The series also reveals the artist’s desire to give concrete form to complex abstract concepts. In his artist statement for the now-iconic 1946 Fourteen Americans exhibition at MoMA, New York, which featured a selection of his interlocking sculptures, Noguchi wrote of the ‘ever-changing adjustment of the human psyche to chaos’ and ‘the constant transfusion of human meaning into the encroaching void’, communicating his impulse to explore existential meaning through his art in a post-war world.
- Yves Tanguy
  My Life, White and Black
  1944
  Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. © Art Resource, Scala, Florence and DACS, London 2022
- Arshile Gorky
  Study For “Nighttime, Enigma and Nostalgia”
  c.1930–32
  Collection of Isamu Noguchi. © INFGM / ARS, NY and DACS, London 2022
‘...Movement, light, and time itself are also qualities of space. Space is otherwise inconceivable. These are the essence of sculpture and as our concepts of them change, so must our sculpture change.’
Isamu Noguchi
Isamu Noguchi travel photography: The Seed (1946). The Noguchi Museum Archives. © INFGM / ARS, NY

The first European touring retrospective of Isamu Noguchi’s work in 20 years is currently on view at Museum Ludwig, Cologne (26 March – July 31, 2022), having opened at Barbican Art Gallery, London (30 September 2021 – 23 January 2022). It will travel to Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern (23 September 2022 – 8 January 2023) and LaM, Lille (17 March – 2 July 2023).

‘When the oldest alloy of the Bronze Age becomes a product of modern industry, the contradictory nature of time becomes apparent. I believe we see with time; that of space, volume, structure, the time lag of sight.’ – Isamu Noguchi, c.1987

We are grateful to the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum for their assistance in cataloguing this artwork.

Unless otherwise stated, artworks © INFGM / ARS, NY. Photo: White Cube
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The Seed (1947)

Listen: Glenn Adamson,
Curator and Author,
former Director of the Museum of Arts and Design

‘The essence of sculpture is for me the perception of space, [it is] the continuum of our existence...’

‘...All dimensions are but measures of it, as in relative perspective of our vision lay volume, line, point, giving shape, distance, proportion...’

‘...Movement, light, and time itself are also qualities of space. Space is otherwise inconceivable. These are the essence of sculpture and as our concepts of them change, so must our sculpture change.’

Related content

Collecting

White Cube Salon

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White Cube Salon

Please check your email

The Seed (1947)

Listen: Glenn Adamson, Curator and Author, former Director of the Museum of Arts and Design

‘The essence of sculpture is for me the perception of space, [it is] the continuum of our existence...’

‘...All dimensions are but measures of it, as in relative perspective of our vision lay volume, line, point, giving shape, distance, proportion...’

‘...Movement, light, and time itself are also qualities of space. Space is otherwise inconceivable. These are the essence of sculpture and as our concepts of them change, so must our sculpture change.’

Related content

Collecting

White Cube Salon

White Cube Salon

Please check your email

Listen: Glenn Adamson,
Curator and Author,
former Director of the Museum of Arts and Design