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Constantin Brancusi – La Jeune fille sophistiquée (Nancy Cunard)

A masterpiece of 20th century sculpture, Constantin Brancusi’s La Jeune fille sophistiquée (Nancy Cunard), comes up  at Christie’s in New York on May 15.  This unique piece from the collection of Elizabeth Stafford is at auction for the first time.  Christie’s say it is poised to make an auction record for the artist. It was cast in polished bronze in 1932 and acquired  by Mrs. Stafford and her husband Frederick Stafford directly from Brancusi during a visit to his studio in 1955.

An extraordinarily rare and important work, La Jeune fille sophistiquée is the only existing bronze example of Brancusi’s stylized portrait of the Anglo-American heiress and writer Nancy Cunard. The work retains the artist’s original hand-carved marble base, a factor of immense significance given the importance Brancusi attached to the interaction between materials and the interplay between his sculptural subjects and the pedestals upon which he placed them.

Conor Jordan, Deputy Chairman, Impressionist and Modern Art, New York, remarked: “A daring and exquisite work of art, the Brancusi from The Collection of Elizabeth Stafford represents one of the vanishingly small number of the artist’s bronzes with its original carved base not in a museum collection. Its appearance on the market will be an exciting event for the world’s foremost collectors of Modern art.”