The Ecorché by Brancusi and Gerota. Artistic Creation and Anatomic Science

• Main Author: Elena Dumitrescu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Publishing House of the Romanian Academy 2015-12-01
• Series: Revue Roumaine d'Histoire de l'Art : Série Beaux-Arts
• Subjects: Brâncuși; Gerota; sculpture; anatomy; model; original; copy
• Online Access: http://www.istoria-artei.ro/resources/files/RRHA_2015_Art_06_EDumitrescu.pdf

The paper aims to shortly retrace the history of the Écorché made by Constantin Brancuşi as a school project in 1901, while he was still a student at the art school in Bucharest. Brancuşi completed it in two years with the support and guidance of his anatomy professor, Dimitrie Gerota, with whom the artist actually shared the authorship of the artwork. It was the first such project ever made in Romania, so it was important for both, student and teacher, that it would be well received by the Academia and the art scene. Created at the beginning of the last century, the Écorché was a very modern and advanced idea, its making requiring high-level skills, unusual and unprecedented, not only for an art school graduate, but even for the entire scene of Romanian sculpture. The work was regarded as a masterpiece, and appreciated as an essential stage in the ensamble of Brancuşi’s oeuvre. The paper presents a summary of the analysis of the Écorché and the copies made by Brancuşi at the time.