For years, Brancusi made hardly enough money to eat. In 1926, a version of one of his most extraordinary subjects, Bird in Space, was famously held up at the US border because customs officials didn’t think it was art. Sometimes, he even baffled his own cohort. Picasso (or perhaps Matisse) is said to have likened Brancusi’s 1916 Princess X, a glistening bronze torso of Princess Marie Bonaparte, to a large phallus. Yet, by the time of his death in 1957, the increasingly reclusive Romanian was…

Constantin Brancusi was a Romanian sculptor who lived most of his life in Paris. He is one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century.

Une muse

At the Gallery: Atelier Brancusi at Centre Georges Pompidou - inside the artist's studio reconstructed by Renzo Piano

Brancusi - The Beginning of the World - 1924

John Quinn, New York (1923–d. 1924; purchased from the artist in December 1923 for Fr 25,000; his estate, 1924–26; sold in 1926 through Brummer Gallery, New York to Duchamp and Roché); Marcel Duchamp and Henri-Pierre Roché (1926; sold in 1926, for $1,000, to Levy); Edgar A