This year we celebrate National Brancusi Day with a special event. We are pleased to announce that the sculptor’s 1905-1906 Bust of a Restaurant Attendant (Portrait of Achille Balde) is coming to Romania for the first time and will be available exclusively at Artmark Galleries. It is about “a work that has never been seen, (believed to be) lost or destroyed.” Recently, the sculpture was exhibited at an international auction in Paris by a Romanian collector.

The opening of this work and the first meeting with the public will take place on Saturday, February 17, at the Palace of Česianu Rakovice (CA Rosetti Street, No. 5) at 4:00 PM in the presence of Mrs. Doina Lemni. , Parisian art historian, researcher specializing in the work of the sculptor Constantin Brancusi and one of the most famous exegetes of the work of the great artist, with an extraordinary visit to Romania. On this special occasion, Mrs. Doina Lemney will hold a conference where she will talk in detail about the little-known aspects of the artist’s biography, as well as the circumstances of the creation of this work, which is considered lost. Thus we begin “Brâncusi Exclusiv”, an exhibition that will be freely open to the public until February 25 and can be visited every day, from Monday to Sunday, from 10.00 to 20.00.

“National Brancusi Day every year includes the commemoration of the personality of the artist, who became a symbol of Romanian creativity. But it rarely happens that we present to the public a work that no one has seen. This year, Artmark presents a completely new work that is considered lost or destroyed – as the artist did before. So far, she has been represented by one photograph from the collection of English collector David Grob, which was presented at Brancusi’s exhibition in Timisoara – “Romanian Sources and Universal Perspectives”, said Doina Lemni for Artmark.

Bust of a Restaurant Visitor (Portrait of Achille Balde) is one of the sculptor’s last Impressionist works under the influence of his then master, Auguste Rodin, before he began carving directly on stone in 1907. . This bust also appears in photographs from Constantin Brancusi’s workshop at 1.16 Place Dauphine from Paris.

The sculpture depicts a portrait of a man with an impressive mustache à la française and was long known as the “Portrait of M.G.” due to confusion It is actually a portrait of Achille Balde, a waiter in the cafe where Brancusi worked as a dishwasher in the first year of his arrival in Paris. The work is reproduced in Brancusi’s most important catalogs from a photograph held at the Center Pompidou, and is the “link” that connects the Romanian works to the Paris era and what would follow from 1907-1908, namely the Prayer and “The Goodness of the Earth”, works paving the way for his famous modernist-abstract masterpieces.

“Art is a mirror in which everyone sees what they think. Joy is important in art. You don’t need to understand. You are happy to see! Beauty is not equal, it belongs to everyone and everyone acquires it according to their capabilities. My sculptures should not be respected, but loved. You should feel like playing with them. Look at my sculptures until you see’, these are just some of the most famous aphorisms left to posterity by Constantin Brancusi (February 19, 1876, The Hobbit, Romania – March 16, 1957, Paris, France).

The “Brâncusi Exclusiv” event is supported by Lidl – Cămara Noastra: Poftă de Romania.

Article supported by A10 by Artmark