Coinciding with the Museum of Modern Art’s forthcoming exhibition Brancusi: The Artist and His Studio, Bruce Silverstein presents more than 30 rare vintage photographs that Constantin Brâncuși himself took and printed, spanning nearly the full range of his photographic practice: individual sculptures, groupes mobiles, studio views, self-portraits, and still lifes of natural forms, including flowers.
Photography was never secondary to Brâncuși’s sculpture. As he produced fewer new sculptural forms, the camera became an increasingly important outlet for his creative energy—a means of documenting the continually changing installation of his studio, studying individual sculptures and natural forms, and transforming what he saw there. Photography allowed him to make permanent effects that were otherwise fleeting: the passage of light across polished bronze, cast shadow, reflection, glare, silhouette, negative space, and the shifting relationship between one form and another. Within the photograph, these elements became as deliberate as mass, material, and form.
The studio itself developed into an evolving, organic installation in which sculptures, bases, furniture, light, and space were continually reconsidered. These relationships became so important that Brâncuși ultimately left the contents of his studio to the French state with provisions for its reconstruction. His photographic archive was extensive, yet relatively few prints left his possession during his lifetime, making surviving examples in private hands exceptionally rare.
Those that did leave the studio often passed directly to family, friends, and members of his artistic circle. Works in this presentation include examples from James Johnson Sweeney, the influential museum curator and director; John Constantin Brâncuși Moore, Brâncuși’s own son; and Marthe Lebherz, a dancer and close companion of the artist.
Taken together, the presentation offers an unusually complete view of Brâncuși’s photographic achievement and of photography’s central role in how he composed, reconsidered, documented, and ultimately preserved his sculptural world.
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