Naum Gabo: “Linear Construction No. 2”, 1970–1. Tate. The Work of Naum Gabo © Nina & Graham Williams / Tate, 2019.
Naum Gabo at the Tate St Ives Tate St Ives presents a major exhibition of one of the pioneers of constructivism, Naum Gabo (1890-1977). The exhibition marks the Centenary of the Realistic Manifesto of 1920. From 25 January to 3 May 2020.]]>
Source: Tate St Ives
Offering an extensive presentation of the artist’s sculptures, paintings, drawings, and architectural and public projects, this will be the UK’s first large-scale Gabo exhibition in over 30 years and will mark the centenary of his Realistic Manifesto 1920, a seminal proclamation of the modernist era. Tate St Ives presents a rare opportunity to see the full scope of Gabo’s interdisciplinary work and offers a fresh perspective on his ground-breaking experiments that made time, space and synthetic materials the key building blocks of modernist art practice. The development of those ideas are shown through Gabo’s innovative use of plastic in sculpture and stage design, his activation of abstract forms in time-based art, and his painting and prints. It shows how this visionary of his era became fundamental to developments in 20th century art.
Our understanding of Gabo in the 21st century is reconsidered through the exhibition’s key themes. It addresses his notions of rhythm, movement, time and structural force that inspired the transparency of his sculptures, the spatial dynamics of his architectural designs, and even the ‘most constructive of arts’ – music. Presenting the breadth of Gabo’s practice, the show marks one hundred years since the launch of Realistic Manifesto 1920, which laid the foundations of these ideas. Gabo’s key works and public projects are also presented in this ground-breaking exhibition. His pioneering work “Kinetic Sculpture (Waves)”, 1919-1920, often considered the first kinetic work of art, creates a sculptural ‘volume’ through the movement of a mechanised form and demonstrates his concern with linking visual art to time-based artforms. A model for Gabo’s ‘ideological contribution to Constructivism’ that flanks the De Bijenkorf department store in Rotterdam is on public display for the first time, demonstrating his ideas about redefining public spaces with sculptural forms.
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