Author: Learn Antiques Team

MINNIE PWERLE: An Australian Art Pearl

Minnie Pwerle was an Aboriginal artist who started painting when she was about the age of 80. Whenever anybody asked her why she had not started work earlier, “no one had asked her” was always her response. Her style of painting was impulsive and characterised by intrepid and lively colour carried out with great autonomy. Her pictures quickly became popular and adored works of modern Indigenous Australian art. However, there was pressure from those who are eager to get her work. Spry and sociable, she could exceed younger women, even in her eighties, and she kept making artworks until two days before she died.

ISAMU NOGUCHI: Designing and Shaping Nature

Isamu Noguchi was a well-respected and admired Japanese American sculptor and designer. At the urging of his mother, Noguchi enrolled at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School, where his talents were recognised and encouraged. Noguchi’s forms seem to suggest nature and human beings interacting with one another or with their surroundings. His preference was generally for wood or stone. Noguchi’s work was also richly inspired by European surrealism and abstraction. His sculptures, fountains, and gardens are focal points in major cities of the United States and worldwide. Noguchi was best known for sculpture, but he worked in many other mediums, including painting, ceramics, interior design, and architecture.