Naum Gabo

T02184 Model for the Esso Project, Radio City, New York 1949

Not inscribed
Plastic and gold wire mesh, 3 1/2 x 5 x 2 (8.9 x 12.7 x 5)
Presented by the artist 1977
Exh: Naum Gabo: The Constructive Process, Tate Gallery, November 1976-January 1977 (77), dated 1949-52
Lit: James Johnson Sweeney, 'Construction unconstructible?' in Art News, L, March 1951, pp.34-5, 61-2

This was an early model made as part of Gabo's project for the decoration of the Esso Building in the Rockefeller Center, New York. Gabo was commissioned to design sculptures to decorate the blind rear walls of two lift shafts facing the two entrances to the building on 51st Street and 52nd Street. For the 52nd Street side he designed a panel with a central construction whose compositional lines suggest a perspective recession, and with revolving doors on either side surmounted by forms which turned with the doors. For the 51st Street side, where the space was narrower, he devised what James Johnson Sweeney has described as 'a vertical element which accents the high narrow panel, and built round this swinging forms which draw the side walls into unity with the end wall through their rhythms'. The artist said that this particular model was for the construction on the 51st Street side, not the side with the revolving doors (information from Mrs Gabo, 27 July 1977), though it shows his ideas at an early stage and the final design was rather different.

The project was unfortunately abandoned, largely on the grounds of expense, and the artist afterwards presented the four principal models to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1953. They are listed in The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Bulletin, XX, Summer 1953, p.43 with the date 1949.

Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, pp.252-3, reproduced p.252