The
Romanian sculptor Constantin
Brancusi, (1876-1957) was a central figure of the modern
movement and a pioneer of abstraction. His sculpture is noted
for its visual elegance and sensitive use of materials, combining
the directness of peasant carving with the sophistication of
the Parisian avant-garde. After attending the Bucharest School
of Fine Arts and learning of the sculpture of August Rodin,
Brancusi traveled to Paris in 1904. Brancusi created his first
major work, The Kiss, in 1908. From this time his sculpture
became increasingly abstract, moving from the disembodied head
of Sleeping Muse to the virtually featureless Beginning of the
World and from the formal figure of the legendary bird Maiastra
to numerous versions of the ethereal Bird in Space. Brancusi's
sculpture gained international notoriety at the 1913 Armory
Show in New York, a city that he visited four times and where
his work frequently would be exhibited. In his Paris studio
at 8 Impasse Ronsin Brancusi devoted great attention to the
arrangement of his sculptures, documenting individual works
and their installation in an important body of photographs.
Isamu Noguchi worked as a studio assistant for Brancusi in 1927,
and Brancusi taught him to carve stone and wood. In the 1930s
Brancusi worked on two ambitious public sculpture projects,
an unrealized temple in India for the Maharajah of Indore and
the installation at Tirgu Jiu, Romania, of his Gate of the Kiss,
Table of Silence and a 100-foot tall cast iron version of Endless
Column. On his death Brancusi left the contents of his studio
to the Museum of Art of the City of Paris, on condition that
the studio be installed in the museum in its entirety.
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