Constantin Brâncuși; surname sometimes spelled Brâncuș; February 19, 1876 – March 16, 1957) was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His abstract style emphasizes clean geometrical lines that balance forms inherent in his materials with the symbolic allusions of representational art. Famous Brâncuși works include the Sleeping Muse (1908), The Kiss (1908), Prometheus (1911), Mademoiselle Pogany (1913), The Newborn (1915), Bird in Space(1919) and The Column of the Infinite (Coloana infinitului), popularly known as The Endless Column (1938). Considered the pioneer of modernism, Brâncuși is called the patriarch of modern sculpture.

In his Paris studio, Brâncuși devoted great attention to the arrangement of his sculptures, documenting individual works and their installation in an important body of photographs. Isamu Noguchi worked as a studio assistant for Brâncuși in 1927, and Brâncuși taught him to carve stone and wood. In the 1930s Brâncuși worked on two ambitious public sculpture projects, an unrealized temple in India for the Maharajah of Indore and the installation at Tirgu Jiu, Romania, of his Gate of the Kiss, Table of Silence and a 100-foot tall cast iron version of Endless Column. On his death Brâncuși left the contents of his studio to the Museum of Art of the City of Paris, on condition that the studio be installed in the museum in its entirety.