EAST HAMPTON.- Born into a family of stone carvers in the town of Mure on the Japanese island of Shikoku, Masatoshi Izumi was the principal collaborator of Isamu Noguchi on the artist's late stone sculpture. Izumi began working with stone in 1953, and in 1964 he co-founded the Stone Atelier in Kagawa Prefecture, dedicated to new architectural and artistic uses of traditional stone cutting techniques. That year he also met Isamu Noguchi, who in 1966 asked Izumi to help him carve the monumental granite sculpture Black Sun, completed in 1969 for the Seattle Art Museum. Izumi then developed a studio complex in Mure for Isamu Noguchi, and he assembled a group of artisans to work on Noguchi's granite and basalt sculptures. In addition to his twenty-two year collaboration with Isamu Noguchi, Masatoshi Izumi and his colleagues realized some of the most ambitious architectural, sculpture, and garden stone projects.

From ancient times, humankind has sought the mystery of nature that resides within stone. We have raised stones, arranged stones, piled stones one atop the other. Intent on dialogue with the universe, as the critical sustenance for life, stone has also awakened within us belief in the future. Determined to split stone, I stand before it. At that instant when the stone yields to my blow and splits with a sharp crack, exposing the unsullied beauty of its interior to the air for the first time I feel a heady thrill and imbibe a fresh draught of courage. The unbelievable purity and perfection of the break’s surface binds Heaven and Earth together, quietly ruling space. I long to become even more intimate with stone, the origin of all living things. An invitation to the unknown.
IZUMI MASATOSHI, JUNE 2008