books

Description

Prolific sculptor, teacher and art writer Sidney Geist remains after his death in 2005 a leading authority on pioneer modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi. Geist’s book, Brancusi: A Study of the Sculpture, is widely considered the seminal study. Geist went on to publish several other books on Brancusi's work, including a catalogue raisonné. In this excerpt from a collection of unpublished essays, Geist movingly describes the great sculptor's last days, when art patrons in Chicago and New York competed to have an immense version of The Endless Column erected on American soil. Brancusi himself seemed to have nursed a bigger dream for America. Even as his health deteriorated rapidly, the 81 year-old master boasted, just months before his death, that the project would become  “one of the marvels of the world”.