The Gunas

1946

“Kouros” at the 1946 exhibition

In the new Greenwich Village studio he took upon his return to New York, his sculpture of the 1940s draws from surrealism, from mixed-media constructions and landscape reliefs to lunars (self-illuminating reliefs) and biomorphic sculptures made of interlocking slabs. The most famous of the slab works, Kouros, is first shown in a September 1946 exhibition, helping to cement his place in the New York art scene.

1947

Begins working with Herman Miller and Knoll

He begins a working relationship with Herman Miller of Zeeland, Michigan, which proves very fruitful, resulting in designs that become symbols of the modernist style, including the iconic Noguchi table, still in production today; he also designs furniture and lamps for Knoll. During this period he continues his involvement with theater, designing sets for Martha Graham’s Appalachian Spring and John Cage and Merce Cunningham’s The Seasons.

1948

Suicide of his friend Arshile Gorky

In 1948 his artist friend Arshile Gorky takes his own life.

1948

Applies for a Bollingen Fellowship

After Gorky’s death and a failed romantic relationship with Nayantara Pandit, the niece of the Indian nationalist Jawaharlal Nehru, Noguchi applies for a Bollingen Fellowship to travel the world, proposing to study public space as research for a book about the “environment of leisure”.