Cutting Edge: Noguchi’s Aluminum Monolith Sesshū, 1958

Isamu Noguchi’s Sesshū (1958) exemplifies the Japanese American artist’s commitment to synthesizing disparate cultures through his work. 

Noguchi attributed his long-standing interest in making three-dimensional sculpture from two-dimensional materials to his childhood training in origami and kirigami—the Japanese arts of cutting and folding paper. 

Off view since 1968, the recently conserved Sesshū was created from a single sheet of Alcoa (Aluminum Company of America) manufactured aluminum, which was not considered a fine art material in the 1950s. The artist used industrial equipment to cut and bend the flat sheet into a screenlike form.​

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website