A sophisticated analysis of the Romanian folk traditions expressed in Brancusi's sculpture by a leading student of the illustrious Romanian artist and his works.

This catalogue is published to accompany the exhibition of the same name in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (8 February-11 May 2014). The exhibition is a unique meeting of the work of three of the most influential artists of the twentieth century: Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), Medardo Rosso (1858-1928) and Man Ray (1890-1976). The works exhibited and discussed in the catalogue, forty-five sculptures and some hundred photographs they took of them, offer a glimpse over the shoulders of these artists.Not only were Brancusi, Rosso and Man Ray all crucial in the development of modern sculpture, they were innovators in the way they involved photography in their work-not so much for recording it, but as a means of explaining how viewers should look at and interpret their sculptures. They played with the possibilities of the medium-experimental for the time-using overexposure, innovative camera angles and blurring the foreground or background.

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This collection of essays is based on 35 years of Edith Balas's scholarship of Constantin Brancusi, the twentieth century's most influential sculptor. In her 1987 book, Brancusi and Romanian Folk Traditions, Balas convincingly demonstrated that Brancusi's sculpture is rooted in his Romanian peasant origins, his artisan training, and the folklore familiar to him. The present collection of essays explores how this giant also related to his Parisian environment.