Portrait of M. Pogany (version 1928)

Mediums: bronze.
Location: The Norton Museum of Art, Florida (the USA).

Simple, even severe in its perfection and beauty, the sculpture in its first marble version was selected for the 1913 New York exhibition, which entered the history of art as the scandalous “Armory”. The work related to the first (pre-cubic) period demonstrates high technical skill and full autonomy of the author’s style. For Brancusi, the simplification of forms was not an exercise in plastic design; it reflected his “peasant” interpretation of the rhythms of the early 20th century. No wonder Roger Fry said at the exhibition of artists in London that “futuristic sculpture, like futuristic painting, begins with a fundamental departure from realism”.