Costantin Brancusi: The Photographs

“Brancusi: The Photographs” an exhibition of the artist’s photographic works featuring 25 rare vintage prints dating from the from the early 20th century made by Brancusi himself. This exhibition reveals Brancusi’s visionary dedication to the photographic medium as means of personal expression—an art form that the artist explored parallel to his sculpture.

Presented for the first time in Miami, the works included in Brancusi (b.1876, Hobița): The Photographs were printed by the artist and come from family, friends and known collectors of his work who received them during the artist’s lifetime. Produced from both photographic negatives as well as 16 mm film stills, these vintage prints include images of his individual sculptures, or at times larger studio views of groupings of his works (termed “groupe mobiles” by the artist) as well as numerous self-portraits, arresting still-lives in the style of the “ready-made” such as flowers and a tree trunk, and countless other visual experiments taken within and outside of his studio.

The photographs are integral to understanding Brancusi as an artist as they indicate that he was not only fully aware of photography’s power to guide, control, and enhance the viewer’s experience of his three- dimensional works, but also to completely transform them into new works of art. By physically placing and positioning his sculptures in his studio, Brancusi creates complex compositions that often incorporate radical lighting; his photographs express a unique pictorial vision that moves decisively beyond mere documentation and firmly establishes Brancusi as one of the most remarkably innovative image-makers in the history of the medium.

This exhibition furthers the critical dialogue surrounding this seminal body of work. Becoming a topic of growing interest, Brancusi‘s photographs have been the focus of several recent exhibitions, including “The Original Copy, Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today”, held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, organized by Roxana Marcoci; “Constantin Brancusi & Richard Serra: Resting in Time and Space”, shown at the Foundation Beyeler, Switzerland produced by Oliver Wick; “Framing Sculpture: Brancusi, Rosso and Man Ray” at the Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam; and “Brancusi, Film and Photography”, the monumental exhibition of Brancusi‘s photographs exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, curated by Quentin Bajac.