Constantin BRANCUSI (1876 - 1957) Sleeping Child's Head, col - Lot 9

Constantin BRANCUSI (1876 - 1957) Sleeping Child's Head, colored plaster (1906 - 1907), The Newborn II, plaster ? (before 1923), ca. 1923. Sculptures made in 1906-1907 and before 1923. Photograph. Vintage silver print. Another print of this image is in the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and another at MoMA in New York. Height 18 - Width 24 cm Provenance : - Marie-Louise GRAVIER (born 1878), - Gilberte GRAVIER (b. 1898), daughter, - Madeleine A. (b. 1924), her granddaughter, - By descent to the present owners. Bibliography: - Collection de Photographies du Musée National d'Art Moderne. Photographies 1905-1948", Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1996, p. 71. - "Brancusi, Images Film sans fin Photographie", Catalogue Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2011, p. 153 variant. "This photograph is a perfect example of the artist's practice of forming groups of sculptures according to a concept that he explains through the image made with his camera. Here, he installs the first version of La Tête d'enfant endormi next to Le Nouveau-né, the version that closes the "recumbent heads" series. Brancusi's desire to draw attention to the metamorphoses these children's heads have undergone in the course of his work to simplify and sublimate these forms is evident. It's a veritable lesson in artistic pedagogy. It is only in the form of photography that the artist suggests his work and the meaning of his sculptures." Doïna Lemny, Brancusi, La chose vraie, Gourcuff Gradenigo, 2022.