The Romanian government has retained lawyers in France to petition for the repatriation of sculptor Constantin Brâncuşi's remains, which are currently in the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. The government has signed a contract for some EUR 20,000 with a French law firm, which will be paid from this year's budget of the General Secretariat of the Government.

Government spokesman Andrei Zaharescu, quoted by local news agency Mediafax, said that the repatriation of Brâncuşi's remains was necessary, given that the sculptor is a "national asset" but said that the process will be long. The plan is to return the sculptor to his home town of Târgu Jiu.

The idea of bringing the bones of Romania's greatest artist back home has been around for a number of years. Following a memorandum in July 2003, Romania's Foreign Ministry approached important French cultural figures over the repatriation of the remains, but according to the Ministry, the idea was discouraged as there is no written testament from the sculptor himself expressing a desire to be buried in Romania, if and when it became possible.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of Constantin Brâncuşi in the art world. He has been called “The Father of Modern Sculpture” and his works can fetch tens of millions of dollars at auction. He was born near Târgu Jiu in 1876. He studied in Bucharest initially and later in Munich and at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Brâncuşi worked in France and was an important part of the art scene in the early part of the 20th Century. He worked briefly in Rodin’s studio, before developing his own hugely influential abstract style. He did not gain favor with the communist regime Romania, which criticized his works for being “bourgeois,” and after he gained French citizenship, he lived out his later years as something of an exile in France. Brâncuşi died in 1957 and was buried in Montparnasse Cemetery, where some of his friends' graves were already adorned with his sculptures. Brâncuşi is now considered one of the most important sculptors of the last century.

editor@romania-insider.com