Pace Gallery Announces Global Representation of the Constantin Brancusi Estate

Pace is honored to announce its global representation of the Constantin Brancusi Estate. Regarded as one of the most important figures of 20th-century sculpture and a pioneer of Modernism, Brancusi is known for his rigorous inquiries into the material and conceptual possibilities of elemental forms in space. Working in concentrated series across decades of his career, Brancusi created iconic, impactful sculptures that have inspired generations of artists, from his contemporaries in the School of Paris to the Minimalists and beyond.

The gallery’s first major project spotlighting Brancusi will be an exhibition in London this fall, curated by Dr. Jérôme Neutres, an independent curator who was named an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture in 2023. The Brancusi Estate joins more than 30 artists’ estates represented by Pace, including those of Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Agnes Martin, Louise Nevelson, and Mark Rothko. Over more than six decades, the gallery has honed its expertise in supporting estates and sustaining artists’ legacies.

Ahead of Pace’s show in London, a major survey of Brancusi’s work at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, produced in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, is on view through August 9, 2026.

Brancusi’s singular vision, which combined careful formal reduction with various modes of assemblage, led to creation of forms that are both organic and idealized, universal yet spiritually particular. Drawing inspiration from Romanian folk art, African wood carvings, Cycladic figures, and other artistic traditions, his works are striking in their simplicity and directness, lending them a quality of timelessness. Brancusi considered the bases of his sculptures to be part of the total work; his explorations of structural relationships between diverse media—marble, scrap timber, carved wood, and brass—added a new dimension to the concept of the art object.

Constantin Brancusi was born in 1876 in the Romanian village of Hobița, which he left in 1887. After having taken various jobs, he decided to study sculpture at the Scoala de meserii (School of Arts and Crafts) in Craiova from 1894 to 1898. His next step was to attend courses at the Scoala Natională de Arte Frumoase (National School of Fine Arts) in Bucharest from 1898 to 1902. In 1904, he made his way to Paris, eventually enrolling in the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts and later working as an assistant in the studio of Auguste Rodin. Departing Rodin’s studio after a month, Brancusi subsequently adopted a direct carving technique to develop his own artistic language, in which graceful, pared-down forms navigate the boundaries of figuration and abstraction.

The major themes of Brancusi’s oeuvre—including metamorphosis, universal forces, and spirituality—and his reoccurring motifs—birds, fish, and portraits of women and children—took shape in the years that followed, and the artist continually returned to specific forms over decades. Though he had previously exhibited work in Salons across Europe, it was at the 1913 Armory Show in New York where a wide audience first felt the profound impacts of his elegant yet radical sculptures. After showing five sculptures at the Armory—including Mademoiselle Pogany, modeled after a student in Paris named Margit Pogany—alongside work by his friend Marcel Duchamp, Brancusi participated the following year in his first solo exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery with help from Edward Steichen. He maintained close ties with New York artists and collectors throughout his career, visiting the city for the first time in 1926.

Paris was Brancusi’s creative center, however, and though he tended toward a more isolated existence, his circle of contemporaries included Paul Gauguin, Medardo Rosso, Erik Satie, and other marquee figures. In 1916, he moved his studio to the Impasse Ronsin in the city’s 15th arrondissement—home to a group of artists’ studios—where he produced much of his work, fine-tuning forms such as his Bird in Space and Sleeping Muse. When he died in 1957, he left his studio and its contents to the French state, though it was demolished in 1972. An exact replica of the space was built across from the Centre Pompidou in 1997, where it stands today, a testament to the life’s work of a hugely influential artist.

To learn more about Constantin Brancusi, click here.