Bronze 15 3/4" (40 cm) high, on four-part pedestal of marble 3 5/8" (9.1 cm) x 3 3/4" (9.4 cm) in diameter, limestone 9 7/8 x 14 5/8 x 14 1/8" (25 x 37.1 x 36.2 cm), and two oak sections (carved by the artist) 7 3/8 x 14 3/8 x 14 1/4" (18.6 x 36.3 x 36.2) and 35 1/2 x 11 x 11" (90.2 x 28 x 28 cm), overall 71 1/4 x 14 1/4 x 14 1/2" (181 x 36.2 x 36.8 cm)
Not on view
In addition to drawing on the folk art of his native Romania, Brancusi was one of many artists working in Paris during the 1920s who appropriated elements of African sculpture, which he saw in private collections and at Paris’s Musée d’Ethnographie. According to the artist, the series to which this work belongs was inspired by a woman he saw at the 1922 Colonial Exposition in Marseilles—one of the era’s many international fairs promoting European colonial dominance—whom he assumed to be of African descent. Brancusi’s choice to isolate the figure’s hair and lips reflects Western stereotypes about the appearance of people from Africa. The work’s original French title, La Négresse blonde II, includes a dehumanizing term—“négresse”—which was historically used to exoticize and eroticize Black women.
2023
Provenance Research Project
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1934 Philipp L. Goodwin (acquired from Brummer Gallery)
1958 The Museum of Modern Art, New York (acquired from the above)
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Constantin Brancusi
French, born Romania. 1876–1957 36 works onlineConstantin Brancusi sought to expand the bounds of sculptural language. At the core of this pursuit was an abiding interest in materiality, which he probed tirelessly across wood, bronze, and stone.
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