A sculptor, as well as a designer, set designer, architect and landscape architect- Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) was a versatile artist who intimately linked his art to his life and to life itself. Straddling the United States and Japan - his two homelands - and navigating the realms of abstraction and figuration, tradition and modernity, he created tirelessly, without ever being constrained by boundaries. A leading figure on the post-war international art scene, he is also known for his Akari lamps, a luminous reinterpretation of the Japanese lantern. And whilst his sculptures are now part of the collections of the world's greatest museums, they also occupy public spaces in cities, where they become places for play, meditation or contemplation - in short, for life itself, for the greatest number of people. As its name implies, La biblioth?que de l'Amateur is an art lover's library, retracing the creative history of the 20th century in the fields of architecture, design and the decorative arts.