|
|
Constantin
Brancusi/Works and
biography
|
|
|
|
Maiastra
1912 (?) |
Bird in
Space
1932-40 |
|
|
|
Constantin Brancusi was born February 19, 1876, in Hobitza,
Romania. He studied art at the Craiova School of Arts
and Crafts from 1894 to 1898 and at the Bucharest School
of Fine Arts from 1898 to 1901. Eager to continue his
education in Paris, Brancusi arrived there in 1904 and
enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1905. The following
year, his sculpture was shown at the Salon d’Automne,
where he met Auguste Rodin.
Soon after 1907, Brancusi’s mature period began.
The sculptor had settled in Paris but throughout these
years returned frequently to Bucharest and exhibited
there almost every year. In Paris, his friends included
Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse,
Amedeo Modigliani, and Henri Rousseau. In 1913, five
of Brancusi’s sculptures were included in the
Armory Show in New York. Alfred Stieglitz presented
the first solo show of Brancusi’s work at his
gallery “291,” New York, in 1914. Brancusi
was never a member of any organized artistic movement,
although he associated with Francis Picabia, Tristan
Tzara, and many other Dadaists in the early 1920s. In
1921, he was honored with a special issue of The Little
Review. He traveled to the United States twice in 1926
to attend his solo shows at Wildenstein and at the Brummer
Gallery in New York. The following year, a historic
trial was initiated in the United States to determine
whether Brancusi’s Bird in Space was liable for
duty as a manufactured object or as a work of art. The
court decided in 1928 that the sculpture was a work
of art.
Brancusi traveled extensively in the 1930s, visiting
India and Egypt as well as European countries. He was
commissioned to create a war memorial for a park in
Târgu Jiu, Romania, in 1935, and designed a complex
that included gates, tables, stools, and an Endless
Column. After 1939, Brancusi continued to work in Paris.
His last sculpture, a plaster Grand Coq, was completed
in 1949. In 1952, Brancusi became a French citizen.
He died March 16, 1957, in Paris.
|
|
|
