Isamu Noguchi is recognized internationally as one of the most significant artists of his generation. Though born in the US, Noguchi attended elementary school in Japan. Like other schoolchildren in Japan, he learned origami and kirigami (the folding and cutting of paper). This influenced this three-dimensional sculpture from two-dimensional materials, from sheet brass in the late 1920s to surplus sheets of architectural marble cladding in the 1940s and stainless steel in the 1960s and 70s.