Constantin Brancusi Photographs

13 January – 221 March 2026

Thaddaeus Ropac London presents the first UK exhibition dedicated to Constantin Brancusi’s photographs in over two decades – and the artist’s first solo exhibition in London since his landmark Tate Modern show in 2004. The exhibition brings together three decades of the Romanian artist’s photographic work, the majority of which will be shown in London for the first time. In 2026, the 150th anniversary of the modernist sculptor’s birth will be marked by a programme of institutional exhibitions worldwide, including Brancusi, The Birth of Modern Sculpture at the H’ART Museum in Amsterdam and Constantin Brancusi at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, both organised in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Photography formed an integral part of Brancusi’s practice, as both a documentary tool for his sculptural works, and an artistic medium in its own right. Some of Brancusi’s sculptures survive only through photographs, including Woman Looking into a Mirror (1909–14), which was later adapted into Princesse X (1915–16; Centre Pompidou, Paris), his controversially phallic portrait of psychoanalyst Marie Bonaparte. In 1956, Brancusi bequeathed his entire studio to the French State, including a significant body of photographs, which later became the focus of an exhibition presented alongside his first major retrospective in France at the Centre Pompidou in 1995.

The artist began experimenting with photography following his arrival in Paris in 1904. Immersed in the city’s vibrant avant-garde scene, he befriended numerous photographers including Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz and Man Ray. In 1917, Brancusi met John Quinn, a prominent collector who, crucially, acquired many of his sculptures through photographs. The relationship was pivotal in transforming Brancusi’s photographic practice from a spontaneous to a systematic creative endeavour; during his lifetime, he would only allow his sculptures to be reproduced with his own photographs, believing that only these images ‘could convey the artist’s emotional exchange with his creation,’ as curator Elizabeth A. Brown has written. As such, the exhibition offers an invaluable insight into the evolution of Brancusi’s sculptural language,  tracing his radical purification of form – from his early Study for Laokoon, created while still a young student in Bucharest, to his monumental sculptural ensemble at Târgu Jiu in Romania (1937–38), which became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2024. 

Free

Tuesday—Saturday, 10am—6pm