After the change of the political regime in 1989, portraits of Romanian prominent cultural personalities are represented on the Romanian monetary issues: writers, artists, musicians, inventors, people that had left a precious legacy of material and spiritual values. The first post-revolutionary banknote issue of January 1991 had illustrated, for the first time in the Romanian monetary history, the portrait of Constantin Brâncuși.

Self-portrait of Brâncuși in his Paris studio, photograph, circa 1917

The man who will become one of the most influential sculptors of the 20^th century was born on 19 February 1876 in the village of Hobița, Gorj County. As a child he loved wandering the forests and fields, picking up pebbles polished in strange shapes by water streams, making human heads out of clay, carving wood. And he had preserved his childhood passion of direct carving, using it over and over again and transforming it in working technique when he reached his artistic maturity. Direct carving in blocks of wood or stone, without preconceived models and casts, was Brâncuși’s favored technique through which he could reach his shapes’ faultless simplicity.

For Brâncuși’s sculptures are not abstract works, but rather representational. And they represent the very essence of the chosen subject: animals (birds, turtles, fish), people (children, women) or objects, in over-simplified shapes, free of any ornaments or unnecessary details. Brâncuși tried to represent matter reduced to visible essence. And therefore, throughout the years, he had created multiple versions of the same subject.

Among the themes he had almost obsessively repeated are Mademoiselle Pogany, Măiastra or The Rooster. Versions of these works considered representative for the artist’s oeuvre are illustrated on banknotes issued by the National Bank of Romania.

On the 500 lei banknote issued first in January 1991, and then again in the month of April of the same year, is reproduced an image of the sculptor in his workspace. The author of the design is the engraver Octavian Penda, also a well-known Romanian artist, whose signature and monogram appear on the face of the banknote printed at the Printing House of the National Bank of Romania. The dominant colors of these issues are brown, blue-green and yellow.

Paper; 157x75 mm

Octavian Penda reinterpreted probably the most famous photographic self-portrait of Brâncuși realized in his Paris studio. Thus, on the banknote, Brâncuși is illustrated sitting on the Table of Silence, having tools besides him, a chair and a fragment from the Endless Column behind him - three of the elements of the open-air ensemble realized by Brâncuși in the Romanian town of Târgu Jiu.

Brâncuși together with representatives of the National League of the Romanian Women of Gorj

In 1935, the National League of the Romanian Women of Gorj entrusted Brâncuși with the creation of a monument in the memory of the Romanian soldiers fallen on the battlefront during World War I. Three years later was inaugurated in Târgu Jiu the open-air memorial comprising The Table of Silence with 12 Chairs, The Path of Chairs, The Gate of the Kiss and Endless Column.

Self-portrait of Brâncuși in his Paris studio, photograph, 1933-1934

Brâncuși used traditional Romanian motifs in creating the memorial: in the “sky column”, an axis mundi that is recurrent in Romanian folklore and in the architecture of peasants’ houses, and in the motif of the sun carved in the pillars of The Gate of the Kiss. The gate is not a classic triumphal arch, but rather a place which celebrates love and universal peace, again by way of forms simplified to the maximum by the artist. The two half-circles sheltered within a circle, the stylization of embracing silhouettes, is also used by Octavian Penda in the design of the 1991 NBR banknotes, on the back, as well as on the front alongside the sculptor’s bust.

The column’s rhomboid-shaped modules, or “beads” as Brâncuși used to call them, repeated on the vertical towards the infinite, suggest ascent and flight. The motif of the flight “kept me awake my entire life”, confessed Brâncuși. The sculptor repeatedly used the flight theme in the representations of his birds: in the air, in space, golden or just magical (măiastră); because, as the artist used to say, he did not craft birds, but flights.

One of his Măiastră works is also illustrated on the new 500 lei banknote issued in December 1992. The banknote was printed at the Printing House of the National Bank of Romania and the design was made by Octavian Penda again. However, this time, the dominant colors are light grey, blue and red-brown.

Paper, 160x77 mm

On the face of the banknote are illustrated the semi-profile portrait of Brâncuși, younger than in the representation on the 1991 banknotes, a măiastră bird, a fragment of the endless column and a multitude of decorative elements, stylizations of many of the sculptor’s artworks, some of which are repeated on the back of the banknote as well.

Brâncuși’s version of the magical bird found in Romanian fairy tales is a bird with the wings gathered over its rounded body, with long legs, elongated neck and stretched-out head, a bird ready to fly away.

Another type of flight is visualized by Brâncuși in the representation of The Rooster, another theme reiterated throughout the years. Brâncuși’s rooster was compared to a lightning that goes up cutting the air. The zigzag shape of the bird imagined in clear, clean geometric lines repeats the ornamental motifs found on the carved pillars of Romanian traditional houses.

The Rooster is illustrated on the back of the 1992 banknote issue alongside other artworks of the artist: The Gate of the Kiss, The Egg and Mademoiselle Pogany. Brâncuși reimagined the portrait of Mademoiselle Pogany 19 times. In each of his works, he simplified progressively the physiognomy, rounding, elongating, arching ever more the contours and succeeding in capturing the grace of Margit Pogany’s femininity in just the few represented features: eyes, nose and hands.

Gold (999/1000 purity); 35 mm; 31,103 grams

To mark 125 years since the birth of the great master, the National Bank of Romania issued in March 2001 a gold coin with face value of 5,000 lei. Engraved by Vasile Gabor, the coin minted at the State Mint in 500 pieces has a simple and clean design, like Brâncuși’s artworks. On the obverse it has represented a fragment from the Endless Column, the face value, Romania’s coat of arms and the year of issue, whereas on the reverse are engraved the sculptor’s bust, his signature and the inscription CONSTANTIN BRÂNCUȘI 1876-2001

Coming from an ancient culture of wood users, Brâncuși had relentlessly made references in his artworks to traditional Romanian shapes and symbols. And relentlessly he had searched for the essence of the represented subjects, “that which is natural, the essential, direct and eternal beauty!”, as the artist himself confessed. The vision of Constantin Brâncuși had made art critiques and artists alike regard the Romanian sculptor as the pioneer of modernism and probably the most important sculptor of the 20^th century. His works are masterpieces kept in public and private collections all around the world and his legacy for Romanian and world culture has become of infinite value.