Romanian sculptor: born at Targu-Jiu, 1876; died in Paris, 1957. He left home at age eleven, received no schooling, and in 1899 enrolled at the fine-arts school in Bucharest. After wanderng throughout Europe, he reached Paris in 1904. There, he was fascinated by Rodin, who suggested Brancusi come to work for him. Brancusi, however, refused, preferring his freedom to search for absolute, primordial form and to perfect the sleek and glossy surfaces he felt were the essence of his art. In The Seal, 1924-1936, he evoked the idea of the seal, rather than representing its Naturalist reality. His vocation was a constant thirst for the absolute and the eternal. In some of his wood sculptures, such as Adam and Eve, 1921, the influence of African art is fully apparent. He conceived of an order that ruled nature and that finds its expression in perfect, simplified forms. His most significant work is the monumental group he executed in 1937 for the city of his birth, which included the famous Endless Column.
Paris: Musée National d'Art Moderne
New York: Museum of Modern Art
Zurich: Kunsthaus
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[Ferrier, Jean-Louis, Director and Yann le Pichon, Walter D. Glanze [English Translation]. Art of Our Century, The Chronicle of Western Art, 1900 to the Present. New York: Prentice-Hall Editions. 1988.]