(circa) or BCE.ġ919–1920 Medium Bronze, stone, and wood Inscriptions Signed underneath: 'C. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. Status On View, Gallery 395 Department Modern Art Artist Constantin Brancusi Title Golden Bird Place France (Artist's nationality:) Dateĭates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible.

The central polyhedron was cut from the middle of a tree trunk, and its circles (indicating the tree’s age) rotate like a sun, as if radiating light over the bird. Brâncusi perched this refined shape on a rough-hewn, geometric base, contrasting the disembodied, light-reflective surface with an earthbound mass. In the Art Institute’s Golden Bird, details such as feet, a tail, and an upturned crowing beak are only suggested in an elegant, streamlined silhouette. He called the earliest variations Maiastra, referring to a bird in Romanian folklore that leads a prince to his princess.

He began the first of twenty-seven Bird sculptures around 1910 and completed the last in the 1940s. “All my life, I have sought to render the essence of flight,” the artist once said. More than any other theme, Brancusi’s series Bird summarizes his quest for a self-sufficient form. His works have profoundly influenced the development of twentieth-century abstraction. Breaking with the currents of the time, he adopted direct carving, combined different materials for single works, and simplified form in his search for his subjects’ essential characters. Trained in both folk and academic traditions, Constantin Brancusi sought his own path for sculpture around 1907.

Gold findings tree to cast