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Constantin BRANCUSI

"Eve" Dessin original préparatoire à l'encre

s.d. (ca 1937), 9x12,9cm, un dessin.

Eva, original drawing signed
 

Original drawing signed by Constantin Brâncuși in brown ink on cream paper, from the collection of Ion Alexandrescu, a stone mason who worked with the sculptor in 1937-1938 on the creation and installation of the monumental ensemble at Târgu Jiu, and more specifically on The Door of the Kiss and The Table of Silence.
Brâncuși's preparatory drawings for his sculptures are extremely rare, as opposed to most of the few drawings by the artist seen on auctions, which are mainly figurative (women and anatomical studies).
 
We submitted this unpublished work to renowned Brâncuși specialist Dr Doïna Lemny who authenticated and dated it with precision. As an honorary curator of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Georges-Pompidou in Paris where she was in charge of the Brâncuși collection for thirty years, she is the author of numerous monographs and essays on the artist. She provided the drawing's analysis:
“This small drawing traced in ink with a quick hand on small paper calls out by the novelty of the composition of geometric forms: two superimposed cubes supporting an oval head framed in a square acquire a caryatid posture supporting an architrave, clearly drawn at the top of the figure. The quick, firm line indicates the artist's intention to note elements for a more complex composition that he would have intended to make.”
 
Although undated, this drawing can be related to two other similar compositions made on 3 November 1937. The first, of the same size (9 x 13 cm), bears the title “Eva” and is enriched on the reverse with a drawing of the Kiss
and a message addressed to Ion Alexandrescu. The second is larger (22 x 32 cm) and has the same composition as our drawing, but with proportions that more explicitly evoke a female figure (see opposite). In these two other drawings, Brâncuși indicates the materials he plans to use for this future set of sculptures: wood (in Romanian: lemn) and plaster (gips).
The drawing we offer is untitled and does not bear indications regarding the materials, but is in coherent with the tangible research of the other two compositions, and could be a stylisation of the original drawing for a more abstract sculpture project.
The interest in this biblical female figure crossed Brâncuși's artistic career. As early as 1916, he sculpted a curvaceous, Africanising wooden figure to which he gave the title “Ève”. Reworking it, he finally created a more totemic sculpture in 1921: Adam and Eva. As a "constructed" work, Adam and Eve already announced Brâncuși's intention to take up the theme of the original woman, mother and protector, who is here pruned of male attributes and made into an elevation of primary and matrix forms: the block, the egg and the surface.
 
Provenance: collection of the stone mason Ion Alexandrescu, friend and close collaborator of the Romanian sculptor.
 

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