Constantin Brancusi

Constantin Brancusi (born February 19, 1876, Hobița, Romania—died March 16, 1957, Paris, France) was a pioneer of modern abstract sculpture whose works in bronze and marble are characterized by a restrained, elegant use of pure form and exquisite finishing. A passionate wood-carver, he produced numerous wood sculptures, often with a folk flavor, and he frequently carved prototypes for works later executed in other materials. He is best known for his abstract sculptures of ovoid heads and birds in flight.

Early life and works

Brancusi’s parents, Nicolas and Maria Brancusi, were farmers who lived in the Romanian countryside; like other village children of that time, Constantin did not go to school. From the age of seven he worked as a herder, first watching the family flock, then working for other people in the Carpathian Mountains. It was then that the young shepherd learned to carve wood, a popular art in rural Romania for making spoons, bedposts, cheese presses, and facades of homes, all of which were ornamented with carvings. The style of these ornaments later influenced several of Brancusi’s works. In his tastes, his bearing, and his way of life he would forever maintain the uncomplicated tastes of his origins.

When he was nine years old Brancusi went to Tîrgu Jiu, a town near Pestisani, in the Oltenia region of Romania, to look for work. First he worked for a dyer; two years later he went into the service of a grocer in Slatina; and then he became a domestic in a public house in Craiova, Oltenia’s chief town, where he remained for several years. He retained his taste for working in wood and undertook elaborate carving projects, such as the construction of a violin from an orange crate. Such feats attracted the attention of an industrialist, who in 1894 entered him in the Craiova School of Arts and Crafts. In order to attend the school, Brancusi had to learn how to read and write on his own.

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In 1896, at age 20, Brancusi began to travel for the first time: he went to Vienna on the Danube and hired himself out as a woodworker to earn money for his stay. Since his ambition was to be a sculptor, in 1898 he entered the contest for admission to the Bucharest School of Fine Arts and was admitted. Although he was far more attracted to the work of the “independents” than to that of the academicians at his school, he nevertheless studied modeling and anatomy seriously.

In 1903, on his return from military service, Brancusi’s interest was aroused by the fame of Auguste Rodin, which had spread from Paris to Bucharest. Rodin’s audacious conceptions inspired the enthusiasm of the avant-garde and the indignation of the academicians. The example of Rodin inspired Brancusi to become curious about what was going on in the art world beyond the boundaries of his country, and so he went to Munich, Germany, where he stayed until the spring of 1904. He then decided to go to Paris, a costly trip for a man of modest means. He made the greater part of the trip on foot, with his pack on his back, and had to sell his watch to pay for a boat crossing on Lake Constance. He arrived in Paris in July.

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Brancusi entered the École des Beaux-Arts, where he again entered an academician’s workshop, that of Antonin Mercié, who derived his work from Florentine Renaissance statuary. Brancusi worked with him for two years, but in order to earn a living he worked odd jobs. Orders for portraits from a few compatriots also helped him through difficult times. In 1906 he exhibited for the first time in Paris, in the state-sponsored Salon and then at the Salon d’Automne. With a spirit that was still quite Classical but showing great energy, his first works were influenced by the sinewy work of Rodin. In order to get away from that influence, Brancusi refused to enter Rodin’s workshop, for, he said, “one can do nothing beneath great trees.”

In 1907, commissioned to execute a rich landowner’s funeral monument in the Buzau Cemetery in Romania, Brancusi sculpted a statue of a young girl kneeling, entitled The Prayer, which represented the first stage of his evolution toward simplified forms. He participated for the first time in the Tinerimea Artistica exposition, an annual exhibition of new talent, in Bucharest, and rented a workshop in the Montparnasse area of Paris. Rodin’s influence appeared in Brancusi’s work for one last time in 1908 in the first version of the Sleeping Muse, a sculpture of a woman’s face in which the features suggest an unformed block of marble. Also in 1908 Brancusi executed his first truly original work, The Kiss, in which the vertical figures of two entwined adolescents form a closed volume with symmetrical lines. In one of his first experiments with direct carving, he affirmed the pure, organic use of form that was to become his trademark and that would influence the work of numerous artists, most immediately a series of sculptures executed by his friend Amedeo Modigliani starting in 1910.

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