Viewing page 42 of 136

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

SEPTEMBER 1955        11

The colonial French maintain that Tunisia possesses neither the resources nor the skills necessary to become a sovereign state. Burdened by an increasing birth rate and a marginal economy, Tunisia depends on a heavy influx of French capital and food. Strategically, Tunisia is an important adjunct of the defensive system of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

A "tumultuous" throng greeted Bourguiba upon his arrival in Tunis on June 1, 1955. For the first time since French rule was imposed, the red and white Tunisian flag flew over the entrance of ancient Carthage, near the Bey's Palace. No incidents of violence were reported for the first time in months. The elderly Bey also broke precedent and stepped from his throne to greet the "father" of Tunisian independence.

Habib ben Ali Bourguiba was married in Paris to a French girl, Mathilde Lorrain, while a student at the University of Paris. Their son, Habib Kamel, is a French citizen and lives in Paris. Bourguiba's French is said to flow with "Voltairian citations." He has been described as "handsome," "stocky" with gray hair and dark eyes, and the manners of an "astute ambassador rather than a revolutionist." Because he was stricken with tuberculosis when in his teens, his health is said to be far from robust. In a speech after he returned to Tunis, Bourguiba called upon the populace to back the new self-rule agreement - as it "marked an important milestone on the road toward complete independence" (New York Herald Tribune, June 2, 1955).

References
Le Monde (Paris) p 1 Ja 22 '52
Life 38:47 Je 20 '55 pors
Los Angeles Times II p5 F 17 '52
Nation 172:126+F 9 '52
New Yorker 27:98+ F 9 '52
Sat Night 67:9+ F 23 '52 por
Time 65:30 My 2 '55 por; 65:25 My 30
'55; 65:32 Je 13 '55 por
US News 32:39 My 9 '52

BRANCUSI, CONSTANTIN (brän'koosh)
Feb. 21, 1876-  Sculptor
Address: 11 Impasse Ronsin, Paris 15e, France

The "old master of modern sculpture," Constantin Brancusi has devoted a lifetime to the creation of forms that are beautiful in themselves rather than as representations of nature. In his organic abstractions of animals and birds, of the human head and figure, the Rumanian-born sculptor has sought perfection of form, contour, surface texture, and balance. "The dual range of visual and tactile perfection which Brancusi seeks in all his work," wrote A.C. Ritchie in Sculpture of the Twentieth Century, "combined with the mysterious, occult overtones which his forms call up, explain the extraordinary fascination of his sculpture to observers of every degree of simplicity and sophistication."

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City included Brancusi sculptures in it exhibition, Sculpture of the Twentieth Century, 

[[image: a photo of a man petting a dog]]
[[caption: CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI]]
[[photo credit: United Press]]

held during 1953, and presented a special display of his work in July 1954. The largest group of his sculptures in the United States is in the Arensberg collection, now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His much admired Bird in Space figured in a celebrated art lawsuit in 1927 and 1928, when the United States Customs authorities refused to admit the sculpture duty free, claiming it was a piece of metal and not a work of art. Although he has remained aloof from the artistic movements of his time, Brancusi has influenced a host of modern sculptors, among them such men as Amedeo Modigliani, Hans Arp, Henry Moore, and Isamu Noguchi.

Constantin Brancusi was born on February 21, 1876, at Pestisani Gorj, in the Walachia region of southern Rumania. He began his artistic education at the School of Arts and Crafts in Craiova (1894-1898), studying furniture making as well as sculpture. One of his instructors obtained for Brancusi a scholarship to the École des Beaux-Arts in Bucharest, where he received a thorough training in the academic style from 1898 to 1902 and won first prize for a standing male figure, in which every muscle was detailed with photographic exactness. The figure was acquired by the Rumanian government for the École and has been used as an anatomical model for the students at the medical school. Among Brancusi's earliest commissions were a bust of General Davila for the military hospital in Bucharest and the tomb of Pierre Stanesco for the cemetery of Borzcu.

Moving to Paris in 1904, he entered the atelier of the sculptor Antonin Mercié at the École des Beaux-Arts, and studied there until 1907. French sculptor Auguste Rodin recognized Brancusi's ability and tried to persuade him to enter his studio, but Brancusi refused. "In the shade of big trees nothing can sprout,"