The Endless Column or The Infinity Column is one of the sculptures made by the Romanian artist Constantin Brâncuși, part of the trilogy of the Monumental Ensemble from Târgu Jiu. The Ensemble is composed of the Infinity Column, The Gate of the Kiss and the Table of Silence, all conceived and carried out by him. Inaugurated on October 27, 1938, the Column has a height of 29.35 meters and is composed of 16 superimposed octahedral modules, with half a module at the lower and upper extremities.
The sculpture is a stylization of the funerary columns specific to Southern Romania. The original name was “The Column of Endless Gratitude” and was dedicated to the Romanian soldiers from the First World War who fell in 1916 in the battles on the banks of the Jiu.
The column was casted in iron in September 1937 at the Central Workshops in Petroșani (ACP). The head of the project was the engineer Ștefan Georgescu-Gorjan, [2] the execution project and the calculations were made by the engineer Nicolae Hasnas, the execution of the central pillar was coordinated by the foreman Ion Romoșan and the execution of the wooden model of the beads was done by the master carpenter Carol Flisec in direct collaboration with Brâncuși, who had arrived from Paris especially to supervise the casting of the column.
The components of the column are as follows:
- The metal core of square pipe with a side of 42 cm, assembled from three sections with a length of 8.93 m, 10 m and 9.4 m.
- The concrete foundation, which reaches a depth of 5 m, it has the shape of a pyramid trunk, with a large base of 4.5 m, oriented downwards.
- The so-called square pipe that forms the metal core is actually a caisson, made of four corner steel profiles with equal wings, positioned so as to form a square.
The square pipe thus formed is lined, by riveting, both on the inside and on the outside with a 20 cm thick sheet.
The three sections are assembled in extension of each other with screws and nuts. Thousands of rivets were used for lining, these rivets being mounted at a step of 10 cm each rivet from the others.
The “beads” (as Brâncuși called them) made of cast iron, “strung” on the core, are 17 in number:
- A basic semi-element, with a height of 136 cm;
- 15 octahedral modules, with a height of 180 cm each;
- A semi-element at the top with a height of 90 cm, covered with a lid.
The brassing of the Column was done on the spot, spraying brass wire. This technology was used at that time for the first time in Romania and was brought especially from Switzerland. The total weight of the Column (core + “beads”) is 29,173 kg. Between 1998 and 2000, The Endless Column was restored through a collaboration between the Romanian Government, the World Monuments Fund, the World Bank and various Romanian organizations.
