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Lot Essay
Silly Girl is comprised of a smoothly-finished, elliptical marble form and set atop a slender beam of wood. The sculpture is positioned at eye level, essentially life-size in stature and the geometric rounded forms engraved into the surface of the marble all contribute to the anthropomorphic quality that is characteristic of Noguchi's strongest work. Having spent two years in 1927-1929 apprenticing in the studio of Constantin Brancusi in Paris, the influence of the renowned 20th century sculptor on a young Noguchi was undeniable, employing different mediums in combination and fabricating his own complimentary bases, essential to the sculpture. However, Noguchi explained that "Brancusi used to say how lucky were the young people of the new generation such as myself who could look forward to uninhibited and true abstractionspure abstractions, or at least those geometrically derived, left me coldI craved a certain morphologic quality. I developed a deep interest at the time in cellular structure and collected books on paleontology, botany and zoology" (I. Noguchi, Noguchi: A Sculptor's World, New York, 1968, p. 18).
The 1950s would serve as an incredibly fruitful period of travel and inspiration for the artist who was coming into his own artistic maturity, reaching new heights of prominence and interest from top collectors and museums around the world, pushing the bounds of his materials and responding to the enormous amounts of support from high-level public commissions. Around the year 1957, Noguchi began stopping in Greece to select blocks of Penteli marble (the same used to build the Parthenon) that would be pre-cut to approximating dimensions and then subsequently sent to the studio in New York. Noguchi produced fourteen of the Greek marble sculptures, including the present example, for the 1959 exhibition at Stable Gallery, including Woman with Child and Recurrent Bird and Integral, in the collection of the Whitney Museum of Art, New York. Noguchi writes that "the exhibition was in the nature of a homage to Brancusi, and recapitulated sculptural values I associated with him" (I. Noguchi, Noguchi: A Sculptor's World, New York, 1968, p. 36).
The 1950s would serve as an incredibly fruitful period of travel and inspiration for the artist who was coming into his own artistic maturity, reaching new heights of prominence and interest from top collectors and museums around the world, pushing the bounds of his materials and responding to the enormous amounts of support from high-level public commissions. Around the year 1957, Noguchi began stopping in Greece to select blocks of Penteli marble (the same used to build the Parthenon) that would be pre-cut to approximating dimensions and then subsequently sent to the studio in New York. Noguchi produced fourteen of the Greek marble sculptures, including the present example, for the 1959 exhibition at Stable Gallery, including Woman with Child and Recurrent Bird and Integral, in the collection of the Whitney Museum of Art, New York. Noguchi writes that "the exhibition was in the nature of a homage to Brancusi, and recapitulated sculptural values I associated with him" (I. Noguchi, Noguchi: A Sculptor's World, New York, 1968, p. 36).