His parents Nicolae and Maria Brâncuși were poor peasants who earned a meagre living through back-breaking labor from the age of seven, Constantin herded the family's flock of sheep. Geometric patterns of the region are seen in his later works such as the Endless Column created in 1918. Exhibited at the 1913 Armory Showīrâncuși grew up in the village of Hobița, Gorj, near Târgu Jiu, close to Romania's Carpathian Mountains, an area known for its rich tradition of folk crafts, particularly woodcarving. Ĭonstantin Brâncuși, Portrait of Mademoiselle Pogany, 1912, White marble limestone block, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. However, other influences emerge from Romanian folk art traceable through Byzantine and Dionysian traditions. Brâncuși sought inspiration in non-European cultures as a source of primitive exoticism, as did Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, André Derain and others.
His art emphasizes clean geometrical lines that balance forms inherent in his materials with the symbolic allusions of representational art. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1905 to 1907. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Considered one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th-century and a pioneer of modernism, Brâncuși is called the patriarch of modern sculpture. Constantin Brâncuși ( Romanian: ( listen) February 19, 1876 – March 16, 1957) was a Romanian sculptor, painter and photographer who made his career in France.