Top 26 Quotes & Sayings by Constantin Brancusi

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
Constantin Brancusi

Constantin Brâncuși was a Romanian sculptor, painter and photographer who made his career in France. Considered one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th-century and a pioneer of modernism, Brâncuși is called the patriarch of modern sculpture. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1905 to 1907. His art emphasizes clean geometrical lines that balance forms inherent in his materials with the symbolic allusions of representational art. Brâncuși sought inspiration in non-European cultures as a source of primitive exoticism, as did Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, André Derain and others. However, other influences emerge from Romanian folk art traceable through Byzantine and Dionysian traditions.

To see far is one thing, going there is another.
Architecture is inhabited sculpture.
There hasn't been any art yet. Art is just beginning. — © Constantin Brancusi
There hasn't been any art yet. Art is just beginning.
Theories are patterns without value. What counts is action.
Simplicity is not an objective in art, but one achieves simplicity despite one's self by entering into the real sense of things.
Don't look for obscure formulas or mystery in my work. It is pure joy that I offer you. Look at my sculptures until you see them. Those closest to God have seen them.
Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave.
Things are not difficult to make; what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them.
What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things... it is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface.
When you see a fish you don't think of its scales, do you? You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through the water... If I made fins and eyes and scales, I would arrest its movement, give a pattern or shape of reality. I want just the flash of its spirit.
They are imbeciles who call my work abstract. That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.
I refused [to study under Rodin] because nothing grows under large trees.
I do not aspire to be in fashion. For what is in fashion, goes out of fashion If, on the contrary, your work is contested today, it doesn't matter. For when it is finally understood, it will be for eternity.
Things are not difficult to make; what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them
I ground matter to find the continuous line. And when I realized I could not find it, I stopped, as if an unseen someone had slapped my hands.
Whoever does not detach himself from the ego never attains the Absolute and never deciphers life.
Nothing can grow under big trees.
The function of art is to make that understood which in the form of argument would be incomprehensible.
Why talk about sculpture when I can photograph it?
Why write [about my art]? Why not just show the photographs?
Simplicity is complexity resolved — © Constantin Brancusi
Simplicity is complexity resolved
What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things.
...That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.
In art, one does not aim for simplicity; one achieves it unintentionally as one gets closer to the real meaning of things.
The work of art expresses precisely those things which do not die. It must do so, however, in a form that bears witness to the artist's own era.
Nothing grows well in the shade of a big tree.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!