ZURICH.- Galerie Gmurzynska Zürich is presenting a luminous group of Constantin Brancusi’s (1876- 1957) original photography. Among this exhibition of 18 vintage silver gelatin prints count his most iconic sculptures as well as still lifes and a portrait. This is the first commercial exhibition of Brancusi’s photography in German-speaking Switzerland in nearly forty years since the landmark solo museum shows of his photography at Kunsthaus Zürich in 1977 and Fotostiftung Schweiz in 1987. The exhibition fortuitously coincides with a dedicated room of Brancusi’s photography coming to Kunsthaus Zürich in November 2022 as part of the museum’s presentation of the collection of the influential former director and scholar Erika Billeter.
Brancusi used photography throughout his working life as a tool for creating and refining his sculptures and as standalone works of art. However, he initially used photography as a way to record and sell his work. Through his control of framing, lighting, and coloration, Brancusi was able to share with his viewers how he wanted his radical sculpture to be seen.
His friendship with Edward Steichen led to his first exhibition in New York with Alfred Stieglitz in 1914 - two masters who photographed Brancusi’s work. In 1921, Stieglitz sent him a photograph of his sculpture installed in a New York exhibition. Brancusi was frustrated as he felt the photograph did not depict his work accurately.
The same year, he met Man Ray and enlisted his help with purchasing photography equipment, installing a darkroom, and lessons in darkroom technique. Man Ray lauded Brancusi in his autobiography, “one of his golden birds had been caught with the sun rays striking it so that a sort of aurora radiated from it, giving the work an explosive character.”
Apart from photographing his studio and sculptures, Brancusi photographed his friends and lovers. Brancusi adored women and women adored Brancusi. Some complained that after an overnight stay it was impossible to take a bath as it was being used to wash his photographs. There are also dozens of self-portraits and still lifes of flowers, often given to women with inscriptions such as, “Tonight during the dress rehearsal, I will be amongst these flowers celebrating your triumph.”
From 1921 until his death in 1957, all exhibition catalogues, magazines, and monographs authorized by Brancusi only used his photographs. Many of these were used again by Marcel Duchamp in the catalogue he designed for the Brancusi exhibition at the Brummer Gallery in New York in 1926. Brancusi first exhibited his photographs as artworks in Romania in 1925.
Upon his death, Brancusi left his studio and all its contents to the French state. Included in this donation were approximately 700 negatives and just over 1600 prints. Apart from the collection in the Pompidou in Paris, there are approximately 200 prints in major public collections worldwide (MoMA, the Metropolitan, Art Institute of Chicago, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Kunsthaus Zurich, etc.) and no more than 200 in private collections.
