29 January - 23 May 2004
About | Book
tickets | Room guide
| Events & Education
| The Brancusi Trial - audio
| Teachers
kit
|
Buy
the exhibition catalogue
Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) was one of the
founding figures of modern sculpture and one of the most original
artists of the twentieth-century. His groundbreaking carvings
introduced abstraction and primitivism into sculpture for
the first time, and were as important as Picasso’s paintings
to the development of modern art.
This exhibition, sponsored by Aviva plc, will bring together
more than thirty of Brancusi’s sculptures and, remarkably,
will be the first major exhibition in the UK dedicated to
his works |  |
Constantin Brancusi
Sleeping Muse 1909-10
Hirshhorn Museum and
Sculpture
© ADAGR, Paris and DACS, London 2004 |
Brancusi’s serenely simplified sculptures are
widely acknowledged as icons of modernism. His choice of materials
including marble and limestone, bronze and wood, and his individual
expression through carving, established him as a leading avant-garde
artist. He was a close friend of both Amedeo Modigliani and Marcel
Duchamp, and his work has inspired sculptors from Barbara Hepworth
to Carl Andre and Donald Judd.
Brancusi was born in Romania in 1876 and studied in
Bucharest. In 1904 he moved to Paris, where he was to spend more
than fifty years and where, from the mid 1920s, he established his
studio as the calm backdrop to his work. He was encouraged by Auguste
Rodin but, from 1907, he began a process of simplifying his figures
to the point of abstraction. Forms of great purity and balance resulted
from this refinement.
This exhibition will capture the essential character
of Brancusi’s sculpture. It will be highly selective in nature,
with an acute awareness of the artist’s choice of materials,
themes and series. The majority of the works will be in stone and
marble. They include The Kiss 1907-8, the groundbreaking
work in which Brancusi first achieved a balance between recognisable
bodies and the integrity of the stone block in which they are carved.
A group of sculptures of single heads will show the reduction of
incidental detail that culminates in the simple ovoid, The Beginning
of the World 1920.
There will also be strong groups of Brancusi’s
independent wooden works and his individually finished bronzes that
introduce strands within his practice relating to direct carving,
abstraction and responses to other - especially African and Romanian
- cultures. These include Tate’s polished bronze Maiastra
1912, the second of Brancusi’s Birds, one of his most
important and characteristic themes. Over the next thirty years,
his subsequent sculptures of birds grow progressively more vertical
and capture a transcendental sense of aspiration.
The selection has been conceived by Carmen Giménez,
Curator of Twentieth Century Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
and developed with Tate curator, Matthew Gale. Organised by Tate
in collaboration with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, it will
travel to New York from 10 June – 19 September 2004. The exhibition
is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by Tate
Publishing, (144pp, pb £19.99) with contributions from the
curators, and Brancusi scholars Sanda Miller, Alexandra Parigoris
and Jon Wood.
Sponsored by
Media partner:
The Guardian |
