Sleeping Muse

from 1908

His Paris circle: Léger, Duchamp, Rousseau, Apollinaire

From 1908 Brâncuși spends time with artists and writers working in Paris, including Amedeo Modigliani, Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp, Henri Rousseau, Guillaume Apollinaire, Alexander Archipenko and Henri Matisse. He also stays in touch with Romanians living in France — George Enescu, Theodor Pallady, Benjamin Fondane, Panait Istrati — speaks Romanian in his studio and welcomes visitors from Romania.

1909

Meeting Modigliani

In 1909 the collector Paul Alexandre introduces Brâncuși to Amedeo Modigliani; the two become friends, and the Italian draws his portrait in black and red pencil that year. From 1909 to 1914 Modigliani works chiefly in sculpture, and his elongated limestone heads, with simplified forms and polished surfaces, are related to Brâncuși’s sculpture.

1910s

“Mobile groups”: rearranging the sculptures

During the 1910s Brâncuși arranges sculptures and pedestals in changing compositions that he calls “mobile groups”: he moves the works and watches how each change alters the space around them. When he sells a sculpture he often puts a plaster version in the same position, and by the 1920s the studio is also an exhibition space whose arrangement forms part of the work.

autumn 1912

The Grand Palais aviation show with Duchamp and Léger

In the fall of 1912 Brâncuși visits an aviation exhibition at the Grand Palais with Marcel Duchamp and Fernand Léger; the three stop before an airplane propeller, and its mechanical precision leads them into a conversation about machine-made forms and the direction sculpture might take. In May of that year he had rented a second studio at 47 rue du Montparnasse, across from the first.