In Search of the Ideal Shape

Constantin Brancusi (b. Hobița, Romania, 1876; d. Paris, 1957) ranks among the pre-eminent modernist sculptors and has exercised a defining influence over generations of contemporary artists. Having completed his academic training in Romania, he set out at the age of twenty-eight for a tour of Europe before settling in Paris. Organic and stripped down to the essential, his works establish him as a pioneer of sculptural abstraction in the early twentieth century. Brancusi’s persistent pursuit of a creative ideal is manifest in the formal variations of...