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Constantin Brancusi
 

sculptor who drew his inspiration with the source of the heritage patrimonial, going down to "the paddle from the prototypes" and did not sign its works to solidarize itself with the anonymous values of the culture symbolic system, for a long time became already a glory unanimously recognized modern art.
The name of Brancusi is related not only to the participation of art Rumanian with the universal cultural complex, but in particular with the capacity of modern world to work out durable artistic languages, during one time marked by the desacralization, active excesses positivists until the dissolution of the forms and ideals in favour of one obsessional quartering in the "daily urgencies".

"My life was a succession of miracles ", said Brancusi, arrived at the age memories, retrospective. Admittedly, the artist did not speak about events miraculous, external with its being, but of realities, revelations and of dreams lived in the perimeter of its own subjectivity.

All this availability for an extraordinary dimension of the existence is the particular characteristic of its talent. Brancusi affirmed, in one moment of supreme inspiration: "When we are not any more children, we already died ".

Life of that which was going to become most important of the sculptors of XXème century on February 19, 1876 started, in the village of Hobita, commune of Pestisani, of the region of Gorj, located at the south of Carpates. One mention sometimes like date of birth on February 21, but this date is that of the establishment of the birth certificate of the child, who is declared "day before yesterday born".
With humour and a direction of the inherited ritual of his ancestors, the artist celebrated his birthday three days of at a stretch.

The medium where it was born and where it spent the first years of sound childhood preserved, under the terms of the ancestral traditions, the data of a very old culture.

Forms of popular art - including/understanding sculpture in wood, ceramics, the textile, etc., in one context where the habits function perfectly, poetry, music and mythology popular - constitutes intangible files where accumulated artistic and spiritual experiments since the night of times until our days.

Extremely feeling to belong to this thousand-year-old cultural flow, the young person Brancusi moves towards the modern world, under development full in this end of the XIXème century - a horizon of research and waitings where it will quickly be implied. Quite naturally, it stops initially at the School arts and trades of Craiova, where craftsmen continued creations popular Masters of the zone.
Precision of the size, clearness and the polish of the forms are assets which it will use later to create conceptual structures and complex symbolic systems.

With Bucharest, from 1898 to 1902, Brancusi follows the courses of the National School Fine arts, where he is the disciple of Ion Georgescu, and then of Vladimir Hegel, Masters trained in the worship of the classicism, but open (especially Georgescu) with significant art, of impressionist invoice, of Rodin. During its stay in Bucharest, Brancusi carries out a series works with character of study which largely exceed this level, significant artistic elements: the Gheorghe bust Chitu, a Head of expression, as well as a series of copies, remained of reference - the Sectional view (with Dr. Gerota), Vitellius, the head of Laocoon.

Before leaving Romania, it carries out also the busts of Georgescu-Gorjanu (1902) and of the General Dr. Carol Davila (1903), placed later, with unauthorized modifications by the artist, in court of the Military Hospital of Bucharest (1912).

In 1904, it leaves on a journey, its final goal being the town of Paris, centers devoted modern art, where the impressionists had already known the triumph and the Eiffel Tower had become, on the proposals of Symbolists, a pioneer of technological civilization, where Art new (with its many denominations and local forms) had made its beginnings, constituting the first universal experiment of the century in the field.

Considered by certain commentators a voyage of initiation (the idea of the initiatory rite will be present, later, in the monumental complex of Targu-Jiu), the way, traversed with foot almost entirely, stays in Budapest, Vienna (where Brancusi has worked as sculptor in a factory of furnishing), Munich (where it was delayed to admire the collections of archaeology, art Gothic and reappearing) and in Switzerland.

With Paris, after difficulties which it overcomes with its land optimism from peasant, it obtains a Rumanian purse which enables him to attend the workshop of Antonin Mercié, at the School of the Art schools. In 1907, it is accepted with the workshop of the largest sculptor of the time, Auguste Rodin, that it however leaves little time afterwards, proud and trustful in its future, because "nothing pushes in the shade of large trees ".

From now on independent, Brancusi starts to be pointed out with official living rooms, its works waking up of the echoes in the merchants of art and collectors.

It create the Portrait of Nicolae Darascu, the Bust of child, the Torment (1906), then the Prayer and the Portrait of Petre Stanescu, which form one funerary ordered together for a cemetery of Buzau (1907).

The experiment death (the funerary whole of Buzau, tomb stone of his friend, Douanier Rousseau, the Kiss of the Montparnasse cemetery of Paris) it makes increasingly more attentive with what is essential, with dimensions spiritual of the human existence.

By certain sides these works already the future studies, the forms announce undergoing a process of stylization to lead to the simplicity and the concision of the prototypes.

Fine contours, sensitive to the effects of light, move away gradually incidences of sensory to start, in conditions of the assertion of the rationalist tendencies, of which cubism, a long combat to leave temporal and quota.

Wisdom of the ground, a first version of the Kiss (1908), the Sleep (1908), the MUSE deadened (1909-1910), Maiastra (1910), Prométhée (1911), Miss Pogany (series 1912-1933), the First step (1913) is works which testify to its decision to cross the limits of concrete, of the daily newspaper, to consider the values of antiquated arts, from Africa or Oceania.

seek extase, which led Delacroix or Gauguin towards Africa or the Pacific Islands, led Brancusi to an excursion on vertical of the history, up to the prehistoric level, the fabulous Neolithic era carpatic surface of old Europe.

It is the period when it binds friendship with Modigliani, a painter who believes in the ideal of the representation of the human face, whose history is if rich person in the Mediterranean cultures. While trying to define position of formal research of Brancusi, his friend Rousseau says to him these prophetic words: "you transformed the antique into modern ". The sculptor, known more and more, enjoys success with The United States, where it takes part in the International exhibition Armory Show from New York and its first personal exposure to the Photograph opens Secession Gallery, with the support of Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen.

In Roumania, it exposes to the manifestations of the groups Youth artistic, Rumanian Art.

Arrived to his maturity, the artist follows, systematically, the principles fundamental of the form, releasing it from the transitory aspects, of unforeseeable accidents due to the emotions.

The reduction of the forms organics with their structure is accompanied by the catch in consideration primary forms, aspects of the genesis of the life (Princess X, 1916; The first cry, 1917; the New-born baby, 1920; Miss Pogany, 1920; Léda, 1920; The Beginning of the world, 1924). The series of the Birds in space brings the idea of rise in space, the possibility to escape from the concrete framework of the existence.

In this direction, Brancusi succeeds in cancelling the effects of the gravitation, dematerializing volumes by a long polishing. Sometimes - it is the case of the Columns without the end of 1918-1928 - the idea of rise is ensured by growth of the geometrical modules on the vertical.

It is one period where the sculptor makes drafts for the order, not carried out, of the Maharajah Yeswart Rao Holkar Bahadur, which intended to build a temple of the meditation.

With middle of the Thirties, Brancusi returns several times in its country native, answering at the request of the national League of the women of Gorj, who wished to set up a monument with the heroes of the fatherland fallen during the First World War.

In 1937-1938, it realizes, in Târgu-Jiu, the unit including/understanding the Table of silence, the Door of the kiss and Column without end - intended to evoke, along a ritual way, them essential moments of the life.

Brancusi appealed there, once more, with system symbolic system of popular art, the Rumanian cultural inheritance, that it had introduced, with a certain polemical direction, in the atmosphere agitated modern art. An obvious solar principle, justifying the need of order and reason, the step of the popular artist leads towards the essence of reality.

The constructive attitude which emerges from this approach of the phenomena of the life does of Brancusi one of the creators having marked in a decisive way the evolution of the sculpture.

It proposes a decanting and a new integration of spirituality and sensitivity.

Asceticism of the forms, the fascination of the geometry impose a Cartesian rigour in the organization of the space, which knows a permanent tension anthropocentrism, expressed with heat, with one moving comprehension.

In using elements of the language pertaining to the treasure of the culture popular, Brancusi confers on its work a terrible force. Illuminated by the worship of the fatherland and its ancestors, the sculptor, this "genius loci of Romania ", as named it Giulio Carlo Argan, is conquered by the paddle of the birth of the man, discovering, in flow unmemorable of time, crucial moments of its terrestrial existence - birth, love, work, creation, death.

Closed space, circular, of the large sanctuaries dacic of the Orastiei Mounts, measuring the passage of time and holding the spirit in awakening, is taken again by Brancusi to sacrilize a place, an evocative point, where times - spent, present, and future - are linked.
Pushing impetuously on the vertical, the Column without fine mask in its simplicity constructive effort, so to preserve, pure and persistent, the direction of human rise, the aspiration towards the light and the reason, the divine plan.

Of the transcendent will we speak as its "birds", as we already mentioned. Maiastra (untranslatable word, derived from Latin magister) is the gold bird whose migration is continued by children of the carpatic regions.

One day, it chooses a place for y to build a gold nest, where it deposits a gold egg, from which will leave one gold chick.
The children who discover this nest are intended to live an eternal happiness.

Along the centuries, many children scanned it sky to see this marvellous bird there; the only one which seems to have it seen until now was born in Hobita and one knows it in the world entirety like the sculptor Constantin Brancusi.
 

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