Brancusi’s Paris Studio Comes to New York as MoMA Opens Largest Show of the Sculptor in Years

Starting today, Sunday, Oct. 25, the Museum of Modern Art is showing “Brancusi: The Artist and His Studio.” It is the first museum retrospective of Constantin Brancusi on this scale since 1995. Works and objects from his famous Paris studio have traveled to New York.

Brancusi, the Romania-born artist who forever changed 20th-century sculpture, worked for more than 40 years in a studio on the impasse Ronsin in Paris. He lived and worked there and received friends and clients, and over time the studio itself became a work of art. Before his death in 1957, he bequeathed its entire contents to the French state, on the condition that the studio be recreated. Today it belongs to the Centre Pompidou.

The Paris museum is now closed for renovation, which is why many rarely loaned works were able to cross the ocean. The exhibition fills the entire sixth floor of MoMA and includes 210 objects. Alongside sculptures, it features tools, furniture and photographs taken by the artist himself. The pieces from Paris are joined by works from MoMA’s own collection, including the famous “Bird in Space.” It is the same sculpture that American customs officials in the 1920s refused to recognize as a work of art.

Brancusi was enchanted by New York when he first saw it in 1926. He compared the city’s skyline to his own studio, full of solids and shapes.

The exhibition can be seen through Feb. 27, 2027. MoMA is located at 11 W. 53rd St. in Manhattan.

Sources: MoMA, Galerie Magazine

Source: Nowy Dziennik