Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brâncuși; February 19, 1876 – March 16, 1957) was a Romanian sculptor, painter and photographer who made his career in France. Considered a pioneer of modernism, one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th-century, Brâncuși is called the patriarch of modern sculpture. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1905 to 1907. His art emphasizes...
NationalityRomanian
ProfessionSculptor
Date of Birth19 February 1876
CityPestisani, Romania
CountryRomania
Simplicity is not an objective in art, but one achieves simplicity despite one's self by entering into the real sense of things.
Don't look for obscure formulas or mystery in my work. It is pure joy that I offer you. Look at my sculptures until you see them. Those closest to God have seen them.
In art, one does not aim for simplicity; one achieves it unintentionally as one gets closer to the real meaning of things.
Why write [about my art]? Why not just show the photographs?
When you see a fish you don't think of its scales, do you? You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through the water... If I made fins and eyes and scales, I would arrest its movement, give a pattern or shape of reality. I want just the flash of its spirit.
The work of art expresses precisely those things which do not die. It must do so, however, in a form that bears witness to the artist's own era.
What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things... it is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface.
The function of art is to make that understood which in the form of argument would be incomprehensible.
...That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.
Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave.
There hasn't been any art yet. Art is just beginning.
Nothing can grow under big trees.
I ground matter to find the continuous line. And when I realized I could not find it, I stopped, as if an unseen someone had slapped my hands.
Whoever does not detach himself from the ego never attains the Absolute and never deciphers life.