Constantin Brancusi was born on February 19, 1876, in Hobitza, Romania. He pursued his studies in the field of art at the Scoala de Meserii (School of Arts and Crafts) in Craiova from 1894 to 1898 and the Scoala Natzionala de Arte Frumoase (National School of Fine Arts) in Bucharest from 1898 to 1902. Seeking to further expand his artistic knowledge, he relocated to Paris in 1904, drawn to its reputation as a major center of creativity. The following year, he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
Brancusi’s true artistic calling came to fruition after 1907, when he entered his mature period. Here, he began to experiment with abstracted forms and developed his direct carving technique, which involved working directly with the material rather than resorting to the more traditional practice of creating a model to be replicated by others. As his works evolved, Brancusi became deeply involved in the Parisian avant-garde movement. Although he was never formally affiliated with any artistic group, he counted influential artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, and Henri Rousseau among his close friends. In 1913, five of Brancusi’s sculptures were featured in the groundbreaking Armory Show in New York City. The following year, his works were showcased in Alfred Stieglitz’s New York gallery, 291, in the artist’s first solo exhibition.
In a landmark trial that took place in 1927, a debate arose in the United States over whether Brancusi’s Bird in Space should be classified as a manufactured object or a work of art. Ultimately, in 1928, the court ruled in favor of classifying the sculpture as a work of art.
In 1935, Brancusi received a commission to construct a war memorial in Târgu Jiu, Romania. For this task, he devised a sculptural ensemble consisting of The Table of Silence, The Gate of Kiss, and a monumental Endless Column – a project that encapsulates the primary concerns at the heart of Brancusi’s art: the idealization of aesthetic form, the integration of architecture, sculpture, and furniture, and the poetic evocation of spiritual thought.
Despite the onset of World War II, Brancusi continued to work in Paris. His final sculpture, a plaster Grand Coq, was completed in 1949. In the subsequent years, he diligently refined and adjusted his sculptural groupings in his studio, a project that exemplified his affinity for creating dynamic dialogues between his various works and the spaces they inhabited.
In 1955, the first retrospective exhibition of Brancusi’s work was held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, before touring to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Tragically, Brancusi passed away on March 16, 1957, in Paris.
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