“When you see a fish you don’t think of its scales, do you? You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through the water. Well, I’ve tried to express just that.” So said the Romanian-born sculptor Constantin Brancusi. Eliminating the unnecessary and stripping his sculptures down to the utmost simplicity so as to reveal the pure essences underlying forms, Brancusi laid the groundwork for contemporary sculpture to come. In this work, his endeavor to capture only the intrinsic characteristics of a bird in flight results in a beautiful, streamlined form, without head or wings, endlessly ascending toward the heavens.