More than sixty years after his death the genius of Brancusi (1876-1957), one of the newspapers and magazines of art, While the centre Pompidou, in the case of an exhibition entitled A season in romania, pays tribute to this master of abstraction, sculptural, a legal battle is being waged by the State against the heirs of a young exiled Russian buried since 1910 the Montparnasse cemetery, and whose grave is decorated with a Kiss of the great sculptor.

For the descendants of Tatiana Rachewskaïa, the challenge is significant: it is for them to be able to auction the work of Constantin Brancusi, located above the tomb of their ancestor. For memory, the Muse endormie , a woman’s head in bronze, was soaring at Christie’s, in 2017, for the bagatelle of 57.3 million dollars.

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And indeed, according to Jérôme Dupuis, The Express , which captured the subject with passion, the game is worth the candle for the right-holders, as the famous Fuck would be considered today by an expert on anonymous, the word bottom, between 40 to 50 million euros.

Still according to the same source, the amounts of the pharaohs of recent sales of works of Brancusi and the estimate of the Fuck worthy of the treasure of the count of Monte-Cristo, would have attracted the attention of the parisian art merchant Guillaume Duhamel, who had the idea of finding the descendants of the young Russian buried for more than a century in Montparnasse. By miracle, these hoirs lost to the confines of Russia, have preserved a letter from the mother of Tatiana Rachewskaïa proving that she had indeed purchased the sculpture with Constantin Brancusi, for the very reasonable sum of… two hundred francs!

heirs ready to defend themselves up to the european courts

Since 2006 and the refusal of the minister of Culture, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, to let the Fuck of Brancusi outside of France, believing that she could be freed of the grave of Tatiana, the case continues to bounce back before the French courts which, until now, have always given their due by the French State. But in the face of such financial challenges, the heirs do not make weapons. Robert Védié, their defender, warns that if on appeal the administrative court did not hear their arguments, they will continue their legal battle before the council of State, and why in front of the european courts.

● «A season Romanian» and «Mihai Olos», Centre Pompidou, Place Georges-Pompidou (IVe). Tel.: 01 44 78 12 33. Opening hours: Museum, daily, except mar., from 11 am to 21 pm ; Atelier Brancusi: daily except mar., from 14 h to 18 h. Until: 20 may and 25 feb. 2019 Season France-Romania 2019.

● A quick history of the Fuck Constantin Brancusi

● In 1997, the grand palais was transformed into the workshop of Brancusi