Constantin Brancusi was born on 19 February 1876 in Hobiţa, a small village from Peştişani, Gorj County, at the foot of the Carpathians. It is the fifth child of Mary and Radu Nicolae Brancusi.
Although came from a family of wealthy peasants, Brancusi lead a modest life, but one who had to pick the landmarks that will guide her artistic vision later. Remembering childhood and the places where he grew up artist had to confess, in a meeting with Petre Ţuţea, Paris, 1933:
“Back then life was beautiful and harmonious. For millennia, people going, happy life patriarchal. Everything went quiet from one season to another. And you know why things have changed? Civilization great city has come down to us. ”
But Brancusi’s childhood was far from idyllic one. One of the moments spent in these first years of life is extremely suggestive combination of purity and violence that have marked his years in the future sculptor hometown. The timing is reproduced in “Brancusi. A biography “written by Alexander Buican. In 1879, Constantin Brancusi was 3 years old. In the autumn of that year, when it was brandy “boiler”, aiming at those who tasting liquid to see if the process is conducted properly, Brancusi overall catch a moment of inattention. He fills his cupped hands with brandy and drink in one gulp. Cade sleep almost instantly. Early humans noticed only after several minutes. Mom panics, then hysteria, believing that her son died. Towards evening, when the father, Roger, returning from living together musicians, it’s desperate signs visible from afar who awaits him breathless. The party immediately turns into mourning. Father is already thinking to burial. Yet one finds it good to a call Baba Brânduşa, doftoroaie and maid of Brancusi. Brânduşa check baby’s breath, then put them under the nose of horse dung, collected from around. The child sneezes stronger. The world applauds. While the boy is allowed to sleep on drunkenness, joy, party with musicians and continues with more force. The next day, father and son meet orchard. Radu Constantin Brancusi puts to gather some twigs and bring it to him. Father child puts his head down and with canes to the boy, knocking him to remember. And while he feels stinging blows, Brancusi has little revelation that the world can also be seen from another perspective and things around that may arise overturned. Especially the sun’s position, different from the known, makes him wonder, as old age have to recognize, if not himself attend the star’s disorder. “Was the sun as troubled as his father what had happened?”.

Renaissance in Craiova City

Like other children of peasants at that time, Constantine did not go to school. From seven years working as a shepherd taking care of the sheep family first and then work for others in the Carpathian Mountains. Here, learn how to carve wood, folk art fashionable in rural Romania of those years, used to make spoons, foot bed, barrels cheese and facades of houses, all decorated with engravings. At 9 years old, leaving Brancusi Targu Jiu, Oltenia, to seek work. First, it is engaged in a painting. Returns to Hobiţa fingers full of paint and burnt by vitriol, but do not give up. In just two years, leaving again, this time in Slatina, where they engage as servant to a local grocer. Follow other jobs as unsuitable for juveniles, including that of a pub in Craiova, where Brancusi remains several years.
“In Craiova I was born a second time!” She would say later artist, a recognition of the place where it will find its way, the job beginning. Meanwhile, retains the taste for working in wood and is involved in sculpture projects developed. His performances attract the attention of an industrialist who, in 1894, brings the School of Arts and Crafts in Craiova. To attend educational institution teaches the young Brancusi himself to read and write. Working furiously and get a scholarship, finishing in four years studies whose normal duration was five years. Moreover, acknowledged Brancusi in 1938 “hard work, hard and tough, skill and passion, here in school we learned.” In the fall of 1898, he entered the National School of Fine Arts in Bucharest. To attend is forced to sell his lot from Hobiţa one of the brothers. Work continuously. Conscientious and persevering, studying everything required, obsessed to master all the knowledge that is taught, no matter how important they seemed. Two years later, get the first bronze medal for “Head of Laocoon ‘, a bust after an antique model. And in 1903 he received the first order of a public monument bust of General doctor Carol Davila, work that will be installed at the Military Hospital in Bucharest. Otherwise, it will remain the only public monument in the capital of Constantin Brancusi. Another work from this period, designed under the guidance of his professor of anatomy, Demetrius Gerota is the statue of a man without skin, revealing in detail every muscle. The work was exhibited at the Romanian Athenaeum in 1903 shows the beginnings of one of the fundamental ideas of the sculptor: seeking the essence, rather than simply external appearances. In 1902, Brancusi left school with top marks and announcing a bright future.

Hard times come: “We even invented washing glasses quickly”

Constantin Brancusi comes first in the country to 20 years, in 1896. He goes to Vienna on the Danube, where wood carver is committed to to support his stay. Do not spend much in the current capital of Austria, but the impact is huge West.
In 1903, after completing his military service, Brancusi is sculptor Auguste Rodin attracted by the fame that had spread from Paris to Bucharest. Rodin’s bold theories were discussed in all cultural environments of the time, just as the vanguard and academics. Rodin’s example Brancusi awakens curiosity to see what happens in art beyond Romania’s borders. Get in Munich, Germany, where he remained until the spring of 1904. Then it decides to go to Paris, a trip costly for a man with a modest income. Expedition today seems detached from any sort of thriller. Much of the trip is done away with the bag back. For example, to pay for what it was passing boat Lake Constance, Brancusi is forced to sell the clock. On the way to Paris, and stops in Budapest, Vienna, Munich, Zurich and Basel to visit museums and workshops of painters and sculptors. After a downpour, gets sick on the road and infectious pneumonia in critical condition, is received at a hospital nun. A period of recovery at the end of which he realizes he does not have the powers or the time required to lead the way to Paris on foot, so that the last piece of road travels by train. “I had a place to sleep in bad weather. I met a homeless man who guided me to a house of shelter for workers who went from one town to another to look for work. And there they gave to me a little help, so I came to Basel, where I sold the rest of clothes. In Alsace I caught a downpour on the field and then I lay sick … a friend … I nursed it all the way on foot through Bavaria, Switzerland, Alsace, I made it easy. I went singing. I knew what must happen, will happen … “Brancusi story in an interview in 1942. In the end, defeat. Paris is open before your eyes. It was July 1904.

Hunger. Disease.

Weights were only just beginning, however. A year and a half, Brancusi will not be able to work anything in Paris. Long way, numerous diseases and, especially, lack of money, to the point where daily food had become a big problem tormented him terribly. “In Paris I took it hard at first. Sometimes I kept the walls that might fall. Hungry. Disease “, recalled in the same interview sculptor in 1942. It again had to resort to petty jobs which, however, do not allow him to continue his studies. “In Paris I worked at first, to earn my living as a dishwasher in restaurants. I was a sort of butler. Do not pour wine boyars. I specialize in washing glasses. I even made an invention for washing glasses quickly. By me wash water twice: a row of a row of hot water and cold water. I suppressed only use cold water and hot water. Hot water automatically dissolve fat was higenică and dried the glasses is faster … my cold fingertips coarse sculptor, but I resign, “the story Brancusi. In 1905 he receives a scholarship from the Romanian Minister of Culture and Public Education and the exams for admission to the School of Fine Arts, where he will teach the class sculptor Antonin thanks. In this workshop she will meet the famous painter Amedeo Modigliani and for tying a close friendship. In 1906, Constantin Brancusi exhibit for the first time in Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts Salon d’Automne and in Paris, but it is far from being satisfied, although it still amounted French newspapers praised. Even Rodin, Brancusi’s mentor and the man who dominates sculpture that time, participating in the 1907 opening of the salon French National Society of Arts. Here Brancusi is submitted three works: a bust, the head of a child and “pride”. Rodin them both and says: “Not all bad, not bad at all ..”. 1906 30th Anniversary Brancusi and must leave the School of Fine Arts. Reached the age limit up to which the student may be. In addition, he had become a sculptor known and cherished and regularly exposed at the Salons in Paris and Bucharest. In a gesture of recognition, Rodin even offer apprentice to receive an honor for any artist of that era. Brancusi refuses, confessing why many years later, in a sentence that became famous. Read it, you may even have seen on Facebook as a status: “Nothing grows in the shade of large trees.” Romanian sculptor had his plans and his own vision on how to overcome the celebrity mentor.

“I had to look for my path. We achieve simplicity “

1909 finds Brancusi in a workshop Street Montparnasse, Paris. Cream is daily visited by intellectuals weather. Among his friends are Amedeo Modigliani, Guillaume Apollinaire, Fernand Léger and Marcel Duchamp. “In Paris I was friends with Matisse, Erik Satie, with Modigliani and, in particular, Guillaume Apollinaire, whose death was a disaster for modern art. It was a wonderful companion. You felt alongside him. I went as a student in the workshop of Antonin Mercie’s where I had come from a great technical dexterity. I did one day like sculpture by Rodin. I could not live around him, the master Mercator although he loved me. I did like him … it was the hardest years, during searches, years of finding a proper way. I left the Mercat, I upset, but I had to look for my path. We achieve simplicity, peace and joy of intimate difficulties “. In fact, in this testimony on those years, offered by Constantin Brancusi himself in old age, something is missing. At this time, in 1909, the Romanian artist had already Aesthetic bases its future outlook, one that would bring him fame today. Two years before, in 1907, he was hired to carve the tomb of a wealthy landowner, in the cemetery of Buzau. The final work of Brancusi had a statue representing a young woman who kneels. Titled “Prayer”, the work of art is now considered a representative of the first stage of development by simplified forms. A year later, in 1908, Rodin’s influence would become fully visible in the first version of “Sleeping Muse” sculpture of a woman’s face whose features suggest a marble block indefinitely. In the same year, Brancusi sculpts his first truly original work “The Kiss”, a study of two teenagers Figures vertical volume forming a tight embrace with symmetrical lines. What were all these works have in common? Beyond a uniform aesthetic vision it was clear that Brancusi had identified a new method of working. A new sculptural technique, the direct carving. Thus leaving Romanian Western sculpture techniques, addressing technique carver, who sits in the block inform and begin to cut without using a plaster model. This technique, which Brancusi had taught at vocational school, had until then only addressed the folk artists and artisans decorative. The most common instruments during his childhood from Hobiţa, hammer and saw, brings in major workshops in Paris, the cultural capital of Europe at that time. Back then life was beautiful and harmonious. For millennia, people going, happy life patriarchal. Everything went quiet from one season to another. And you know why things have changed? Civilization great city has come down to us. Paris took it hard at first. Sometimes I kept the walls that might fall. Hungry. Disease. I worked to earn my living as a dishwasher in restaurants. I was a sort of butler. Do not pour wine boyars. I specialize in washing glasses.

Final retirement in the workshop

In 1918, Constantin Brancusi sculpts the first version of “Endless Column”. Created a series of symmetrical elements overlapping work is inspired by the pillars of peasant houses in Romania. Two years later, Romanian sculptor terrible leap from traditional area in the shocking book “Princess X”, a portrait of an imaginary person who takes a phallic-shaped. The exhibition triggered a scandal. Police intervenes and forces him to work out. Another major scandal takes place in 1926, when visiting the United States for an exhibition at Brummer Gallery in New York, Brancusi is not allowed in the country work “Bird in the air.” The work was so abstract in the eyes of American customs officials, that they refused to believe it was a sculpture. Brancusi is even accused of illegally enter the US industrial piece. Sculptor returns to Romania in 1937 and in 1938 for the inauguration of three works in a public park in Targu Jiu huge new versions in steel, the “Endless Column”, “Gate of the Kiss” and “Table of Silence”. It enjoys worldwide celebrity, but becomes increasingly withdrawn, spending most of his time in his workshop in Paris. It is cared for by a couple of Romanian refugees, which in 1952 accepted French citizenship in order to be able to leave his entire inheritance. In 1956, an article in “Time” describes him wearing “white pajamas and a yellow hat and groping through his own workshop among heads and endless columns had created all life.” He died on March 16, 1957 and is buried in Montparnasse cemetery in Paris.