Constantin Brancusi

About the Artist

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  Man Ray. Constantin Brancusi. 1925. Gelatin silver print, 9 1/4 x 10 1/4" (23.5 x 26 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of James Thrall Soby. © 2014 Man Ray Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

  A French artist of Romanian birth, Constantin Brancusi is best known for his influential abstract sculptures. He is increasingly regarded as an artist whose integrated approach to sculpture and photography preceded that of many contemporary practitioners. Brancusi’s active engagement with photography was sparked in 1921, when he met Man Ray, who had just arrived in Paris from New York. As the American artist was establishing his own studio, he also helped Brancusi to buy equipment, install a darkroom in his workshop, and refine his photographic techniques. Brancusi took photographs of his studio and his sculptures, not simply as documentary records of the work, but rather as a way to interact with his sculptures as they in turn interacted with light and their surrounding environment. In 1925 the Parisian journal This Quarter published some of Brancusi’s photographs and aphorisms. His archive of about 1,250 photographic prints and 560 original, mostly glass, negatives is housed in the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris.

  —Mitra Abbaspour

• Alternate Name(s) Constantin Brâncuşi (Alternate Name)
  

Meeting Points

• Cultural Hubs Paris
  
• Schools Levy Gallery, 1931–49
  
• Publications Vogue, 1892–1949
  Camera Work, 1903–17
  

Artist Chronology

Walther Photographs

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  Golden Bird