By Picasso Posse blogger Silvana Pop
Romanian born artist Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) met Margit Pogany, a Hungarian art student, in Paris in 1910. She was his inspiration for what has become one the most acclaimed masterpieces of the 20th century: Mademoiselle Pogany (1931), on display in the “Eastern Europeans in Paris” gallery of the Picasso and the Avant-Garde exhibition.
Since the sculpture is part of the museum’s permanent collections, I have often stopped by the PMA’s Modern and Contemporary Gallery to see the delicate egg-like bust of Mademoiselle Pogany and the other beautiful sculptures by Brancusi, whose talent for reducing natural forms to their most basic, geometric shapes, and in turn creating timeless masterpieces have intrigued audiences for decades.
While many of the “émigré artists” in Paris during the first half of the 20th century, including Lipchitz and Zadkine—inspired by Picasso’s work—experimented with the interlocking planes and sharp angles of Cubism, Brancusi aimed to incorporate these ideas with the traditional folk art of his native Romania. An avid wood carver, Brancusi dramatically juxtaposed the smooth marble portrait of Margit Pogany with a rustic oak base. Over the course of 23 years, Brancusi constructed numerous versions of the sculpture, perfecting and simplifying Mademoiselle Pogany’s elegantly refined image to its most pure form. The marvelous end result is what you’ll see in the Picasso exhibition…
For more on Mademoiselle Pogany, watch this video with curator Michael Taylor, in which he discusses how the sculpture creates a visual electric spark and relates to Margit Pogany's own self-portrait.
Image: Mademoiselle Pogany [III], c. 1931, by Constantin Brancusi (Philadelphia Museum of Art: Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950) © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
