Constantin Brancusi
Brancusi was trained as a sculptor in Romania before moving to Paris in 1904. There he studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and exhibited at the Salon d'Automne. In 1905 Brancusi was working intensively in photography as a means of documenting his sculptures, and was helped and advised by the surrealist artist Man Ray. Brancusi quickly became accepted as a member of the Paris avant-garde, as his sculptures departed from the 19th century Western trend toward naturalism and eroticism, and were based instead on non-Western and so-called 'primitive' sculpture. In 1914 Alfred Stieglitz exhibited Brancusi's sculptures at his Photo-Secession gallery in New York, earning Brancusi an international reputation.
