Torso_of_a_Young_Man

<i>Torso of a Young Man</i>

Torso of a Young Man

Sculpture by Constantin Brancusi


Torso of a Young Man is a sculpture created by Constantin Brâncuși between 1917 and 1922. It depicts the male torso as a simple cylinder mounted on vestigial cylindrical legs, cut off at mid-thigh.[1] Sidney Geist has pointed out that the sculpture, without genitalia, is itself a phallus with testes.[2] There are several versions. Torso of a Young Man I was carved from a fork in a maple branch wood mounted on a limestone block. It is now in the Brodsky Gallery of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. A similar sculpture, dated 1923 and carved in walnut, is in the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.[3] Brancusi also cast the torso in highly polished brass. The two examples of this version are held in the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.[4][5]

Brass version in the Cleveland Museum of Art

References

  1. Krauss, Rosalind E. (1981). Passages in Modern Sculpture. MIT Press. pp. 85, 100, 279. ISBN 0262610337.
  2. Geist, Sidney (1967). Brancusi: A Study of the Sculpture. New York: Grossman. p. 59. OCLC 503234056.
  3. "Male Torso, 1917 with image". Cleveland Museum of Art. Archived from the original on May 12, 2017. Retrieved February 13, 2016.
  4. "Record Torso of a Young Man". Smithsonian Institution. Archived from the original on December 27, 2023. Retrieved December 27, 2023.

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