This fall the Gagosian Gallery on upper Madison Avenue departed from its usual pattern of theme exhibitions by postwar American artists to offer something entirely unexpected, a handful of early sculptures by Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957).

This show was originally planned as a touring exhibition, its second stop to have been the Detroit Institute of Art, but, as The New York Times reported shortly before Christmas, the loan of the sculptures had caused such a political scandal in Brancusi’s native Romania that they had to be returned immediately after the exhibition closed at Gagosian. Given the exceptional nature of the loan, and the ensuing commotion, it is unlikely that they will ever be allowed out of the country again.

That fact alone made “Brancusi: Masterpieces from Romanian Museums” a noteworthy event. Yet it was one of those exhibitions that create very little stir. It may be that the sculptor is so familiar to New Yorkers from the extensive holdings of his work in the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, and the Metropolitan that there seemed to be little more to learn about him.

Or it might have been the work itself. The Brancusi on view at Gagosian was, in certain respects, a completely different artist from the one familiar to us. Instead of the modern sculptor of pure forms and dreamy peaceful-ness, here was someone working his way out of the nineteenth-century tradition of modeled figures. And instead of elemental carved abstractions, here were naturalistic human