'Construction in Space (Crystal)', Naum Gabo

Artwork details

Artist

Naum Gabo (1890‑1977)

Title

Construction in Space (Crystal)

Date 1937-9

MediumCellulose acetate

Dimensionsobject: 220 x 270 x 180 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Bequeathed by Miriam Gabo, the artist's widow 1995

Reference

T06978

Not on display

Summary

During Naum Gabo’s stay in London between March 1936 and the start of the Second World War in September 1939, he produced a series of important works in plastic, including Construction in Space (Crystal), Construction on a Line 1935-7 (Tate T03054) and Construction in Space with Crystalline Centre 1938-40 (Tate T06977). Where Gabo’s earlier sculptures incorporated a diversity of materials and tones, these works were made of clear plastics, achieving a new degree of conceptual purity. Construction in Space (Crystal) was the first work made entirely from transparent planes, an elegant formal solution to the challenge which Gabo had set himself twenty years earlier, that of expressing the dynamic interior of objects… (read more)