"Ce n'est pas la forme extérieure qui est réelle, mais l'essence des choses. Partant de cette vérité, il est impossible à quiconque d'exprimer quelque chose de réel en imitant la surface des choses"
(1926, Brummer Gallery, New York)
 

The Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) was a central figure of the modern movement and a  pioneer of abstraction.
His sculpture is noted for its visual elegance and sensitive use of materials, combining  the directness of peasant carving with the sophistication  of the Parisian avant-garde.
After attending the Bucharest School of Fine Arts and learning of the sculpture of August Rodin, Brancusi traveled  to Paris in 1904.
Brancusi created his first major work, The Kiss ( Le Baiser), in 1907.  From this time his  sculpture became increasingly abstract, moving from the disembodied head of Sleeping Muse to the virtually featureless Beginning of the World and from the formal  figure of the legendary bird Maiastra to
numerous versions of the ethereal Bird in Space.
Brancusi's sculpture gained international notoriety at the 1913 Armory Show in New York, a city that he visited four times and where his work frequently would be exhibited.  In his Paris studio at 8 Impasse Ronsin Brancusi devoted great attention to the arrangement of hi sculptures,documenting individual works and their installation in an important body of photographs.
In the 1930s Brancusi worked on two ambitious public sculpture projects, an unrealized temple in India for the Maharajah of Indore and the installation at Tirgu  Jiu, Romania, of his Gate of the Kiss, Table of Silenceand a 100-foot tall cast iron version of Endless Column.
On his death Brancusi left the contents of his studio to the Museum of Art of the City of Paris, on condition that the studio be installed in the museum in its entirety.
 

Le Premier Cri (1917)
Le Baiser (1909)
Madame L.R. (1914-1917)
Mademoiselle Pogany (1912)
Torse De Jeune Homme