Brancusi masterpiece auctioned at Christie’s New York this May

A bronze cast of Constantin Brancusi’s sculpture La muse endormie (Sleeping Muse) will be auctioned at Christie’s Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art in New York, on May 15. The sculpture goes on sale with an estimate of USD 20- USD 30 million, the auction house announced. La muse endormie was first conceived in marble in 1909-1910, and then cast by Brancusi in six bronze versions by 1913. Two bronzes are housed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and The Art Institute of Chicago, and two works in the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Other two bronzes, including the work on sale, remain in private collections. The piece in the auction comes from French collector Jacques Ulmann, who acquired it in the 1950s. La muse endormie is the first in Brancusi’s series of ovoid sculptures, "marking the start of the artist’s mature work and his advance towards pure abstraction," according to a Christie’s presentation. "The form of a sleeping woman’s head has been distilled into an almost perfect oval, the purity of outline marked only by subtle allusions to the physical features of the model." Brancusi was in his early thirties when he conceived this breakthrough sculpture and had been living in Paris for a few years. The theme of sleep fascinated the artist, who sculpted several heads of sleeping women and children between 1906 and 1908. "La muse endormie has a magical amplitude — displaying a formal genius and wondrously modulated patina. Brancusi considered each of his La muse endormie bronzes a unique work of art, rather than as part of a uniform edition. He therefore oversaw the patination process during casting to ensure variations between every bronze. Brancusi delighted in the varying effects of color and finish, always aware of the diversity of expression he could achieve through patination. The present sculpture has a rich, warm patina that Brancusi heightened by gilding sections, a contrast he described to the legendary American collector John Quinn as enhancing the expressive power of his art," explained Jessica Fertig, senior vice president, head of Evening Sale, Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie’s. A plaster version of the same work sold at Christie’s in 2015 for USD 9.12 million. A version of famous Brancusi’s sculpture The Kiss (Le Baiser) was sold in 2014, also at Christie's, for USD 8.5 million, well above the asking price of USD 5 million. Another Brancusi sculpture, the 1923 Bird in Space